Home › Recipes › Fried Mush Balls, or Fried Pone

Fried Mush Balls, or Fried Pone

1 pound of corn meal. 1 pint of boiling water. 4 tablespoonfuls of melted lard. 1 egg. 1/2 cup cold water. Salt.

Scald the meal with the boiling water; add the rest of the ingredients; flour your hands; make round balls, and fry in a saucepan of hot lard. They require long cooking.

No doubt it could be easily demonstrated that four cooks in a hotel kitchen accomplish more in the culinary line than do forty domes ic cooks in twenty private houses. No particular credit to the hotel cooks, but it is owing to the larger scale and system of their work, the greater capacities of their ranges and utensils, the labor-saving conveniences, water and drainage arrangements, and the larger quantities handled. It takes but little longer to cook five pounds than one, scarcely more trouble to make a gallon of soup for twenty persons than a quart for a family. But the emergencies are many, too. There has to be a dropping off and leaving out of many long and tedious processes. That which cannot be made in short time, is most likely not to be made at all, or else attempted and spoiled.

There are printed directions for numerous articles apparently desirable, that must be constantly stirred or otherwise worked one or two hours. To follow such in hotel work is simply impossible, it would require a small army of assistants. The common objection is valid--"O, we can't--there isn't time." The choice, then, lies between making many cheap and good preparations in a half-way manner; giving them up entirely, or finding out the reason why of the long processes and getting at the same results by shorter methods. There will be, it is hoped, many better illustrations than this of corn meal puddings, yet this will serve, and may the sooner establish an understanding of the motive of many directions that might otherwise seem peculiar. It is commonly said that corn meal puddings must bake three hours or longer, but in a hotel doing a healthy business it is extremely inconvenient to keep one minor article, and one so liable to burn, in the oven for that length of time. Fishes and meats have to go in and out, then vegetables and pastry; three hours baking involves three hours watching, and the strain upon memory lest it be neglected. There is no need of this. The only reason for long cooking is to cook the meal thoroughly, and that is better done in a saucepan with a lid on in any out-of-the-way corner, or even in a sink in the steam chest. To bake a pudding longer than till the eggs are well set, is generally an injury. What is at a certain point rich, smooth and custard-like, becomes, with longer baking, watery and inferior, through the curdling of the eggs, just as is seen to happen when a custard is allowed to boil. Cook the materials as much as you please before the eggs are put in, but very little after. Several puddings of corn meal have already been described, the next is a plainer and cheaper sort. Not necessarily the worse for that--it is mere matter of taste.