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Polenta Cake (Migliaccio di Farina Gialla)
2 cups of coarse Indian meal 1/2 cup of raisins 1/2 teaspoon of salt 3 teaspoons of sugar (granulated) 3 tablespoons of lard Mix the salt, sugar, and raisins with the Indian meal in a bowl, then pour in boiling water, a little at a time, and stir well with a wooden spoon until you have a stiff paste and no dry meal remains sticking to the bottom of the bowl. Then take a cake-tin and grease it well with one-half of the lard. Then turn out the Indian meal into the pan, and even it out with the wooden spoon. Spread on the top of this the rest of the lard, softened slightly so as you can spread it easily. Cook in a slow oven until a golden brown. Serve hot.
A plain cornmeal cake of the frugal sort, baked slowly so the meal dries out and the surface caramelises. Two things decide whether it works: how thoroughly the meal is scalded, and how gently it bakes.
- The hinge: scald the meal properlyThe boiling water has to be worked in gradually and stirred hard until no dry pockets remain. Coarse meal that has not taken up enough water bakes gritty and never softens in the oven, since there is no liquid left in the pan to finish the job.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal, and "coarse" here means polenta grind rather than the fine flour-like meal sold for cornbread. Instant or quick polenta will absorb water far faster and give a pastier result.
- How much waterThe recipe gives none. Reckon on roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of boiling water for 2 cups of coarse meal, added in stages; stop when the mass is stiff enough to hold the mark of the spoon and no longer slumps.
- A slow oven300 to 325F. The point is to drive off moisture and brown the greased top slowly rather than set a crust while the middle stays wet.
- Baking timeNone is given. In an 8-inch tin at 300 to 325F expect somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2 hours, judged entirely by the colour of the top and the firmness of the centre.
- The tinA shallow tin rather than a deep layer pan suits this best. An 8-inch round or an 8-inch square gives a cake about an inch thick, which is the right proportion for this.
- LardThree tablespoons total, half for greasing and half spread over the top, where it acts as the browning agent. Rendered leaf lard or plain lard both work; butter will burn faster at this length of bake, and olive oil will not give the same crisp lid.
- RaisinsAdding them to the dry meal before the boiling water lets them plump in the paste rather than scorch on the surface. Any that end up exposed on top will darken quickly.
- Yield and servingSix to eight small wedges. It is barely sweet by modern standards, with only three teaspoons of sugar for the whole cake. The recipe directs simply that it be served hot.
Migliaccio takes its name from miglio, millet, the grain from which the cake was originally made in central and southern Italy long before maize existed in Europe; the same name survived when cornmeal, and in some places chestnut flour or semolina, took millet's place. Maize reached Italy in the sixteenth century and by the eighteenth had become the staple starch of the north, where polenta was boiled, cooled, sliced, fried and — as here — baked in a tin with whatever fat and dried fruit the house had. The Neapolitan migliaccio most Italians know today is a richer semolina-and-ricotta cake eaten at Carnival, which shows how far one name can travel; this version, with its half cup of raisins and three tablespoons of lard, belongs to the older peasant line. Its appearance in an English-language Italian cookbook is characteristic: cornmeal was cheap and familiar to American readers as "Indian meal", making it one of the easiest Italian dishes to translate into a foreign pantry.