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Corn Meal Mush

2 quarts of water. 10 ounces of white corn meal. 1 rounded tablespoonful of salt.

Use a flat-bottomed, bright iron saucepan. Brush the inside with the least possible amount of melted lard. This reduces the tendency to burn and lessens the waste. Put the salt in the water, boil, and sprinkle the dry meal in with one hand while you beat with the large wire egg-whisk in the other, till all is in and there are no lumps to be seen. Put on the lid, push the saucepan to the back of the range and let it simmer with the steam shut in for three hours.

Then turn it out and keep it hot in a bright sink in the steam chest. Where the mush has to be made on a cook-stove, a cast pot with feet, to raise the bottom an inch from the fire, is best.

You will have the same measure of made mush as you had water at first; four quarts of water and twenty ounces of meal producing one gallon. Double the quantity required for one meal should be made and half put away to become cold to fry. For this purpose very slightly grease a bright tin pan, press the mush evenly into it, and slightly brush over with a brush dipped in melted lard again. No matter how little the grease, it prevents the formation of a crust by drying on top. Warm the pan a few seconds and the mush, when cold, will turn out without trouble.

Each quart of cold mush will cut into about ten blocks or slices for frying. Fried mush is one of the things, as fried potatoes is another, that has a telling effect in giving the impression of excellence or otherwise of the hotel table. That indefinite something so often mentioned, called excellence of cuisine, is made up of hundreds of such trifles as properly fried mush. Recently a correspondent of a leading New York newspaper, and whose letter in part was reprinted in the REPORTER, had occasion to comment upon a breakfast at one of the famous hotels of Boston, and went into well trained ecstacies over the simple perfection of it all. "O, the ineffable cuisine!" was the exclamation, and of course it was a woman writing, for men never think of original expressions; one says "the cooking was tip top," and all the succeeding thousands say the same words. Well, there was no mention of fried mush, but there was a hint of golden-hued cutlets--breaded cutlets--and the same conditions and effects pertain to both articles. There was an intimation of crisp salad, and delicately browned rolls and perfect, fresh butter. When, in any case, you are curious to know "upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed?" you may be sure that it is nothing more than you yourself can buy in the market, and at the best of breakfasts the cups are not so liable to be "filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips," as with good coffee and chocolate. The guests prefer them.

This tempting-looking fried mush--and breaded cutlets, too--cannot be had, as a rule to be depended on, unless lard, good fresh lard, can be afforded for the frying. One thing essential to the houses of ineffable cuisine, is to be always excellent, and not good for one observer and indifferent for the next. But cheap, home-saved material, if good sometimes, always carries a proviso. Meat drippings and soup stock toppings are good in a comparative sense, but are apt to make the fries dark colored. Also, these articles cannot be had perfect unless cracker meal can be afforded to bread them with. Stale bread dried and crushed and sifted is next best; corn meal for breading is the worst of all. But powdered bread produces a reddish brown, and when dripping for frying is used with it, the mush often looks more like smoked meat. I do not wish to be understood as advocating expensive ways. All the cheap ways are to be given in these columns; ways of cooking without eggs, without cream, or milk, or butter, without baking powder; and it will not have to be said the articles so made are as good as the best, only that they are good enough; but the opportunity is here improved of showing by one instance out of hundreds, how some tables are and must be better than the rest, and why people cannot have four dollar fare for three dollars, nor three dollar fare for two. When breaded articles like fried mush are made so good with crushed bread crumbs and meat fat from the roasting pans that nobody observes any inferiority, the credit is wholly due to the skill and carefulness of the cook. Corn meal for breading has such a bad appearance that it ought to be counted out. People who like the taste of fried meal, and will have even oysters breaded with it, have to forego the neatness and color that the other methods give. One of our French preceptors gives us a homily on frying, put in the readable form of a Count So-and-so lecturing his cook, who, on the occasion of a dinner to invited guests, had spoiled a choice fish through putting it into lard (or oil) not hot enough. The gist of it is, that if you put the breaded article into lard not hot enough to immediately cook the outside, the breading washes off, the juices of the fish or meat ooze out, and these cannot be browned at all without being entirely dried out. With an article so largely made up of water as mush, it is still more necessary to have the outside coat of egg and crumbs instantly set, otherwise it will merely melt away and be lost.