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Theory and Practice

Since it has become the very general custom to eat one or other of the several varieties of mush as a first course at breakfast and supper, the best methods of preparing the simple dish so as to have it in perfection can no longer be considered a matter too trifling for any first-rate cook's attention. Besides, whatever of consequence mush may lack in the instance, it gains through diffusion, for thousands of cooks are wanted to make good mush for every one that is required to prepare costly and ornamental dinners; so, you see, from the utility point of view, well-cooked mush is a thousand times better than well cooked truffles. And if that reads like a riddle it will have to go, for there is no room here to straighten it out.

When a lot of corn meal is piled into a saucepan of water, not half enough for so much meal, and impatiently stirred up and served ten minutes afterward, that is not mush. I don't know what it is. There is no name for it. But yet there are people so possessed with the idea that mush can never be cooked enough, that they become crotchety, one might almost say fanatical, in pursuing the other extreme.

As we may have to go to the Germans for instruction in German dishes, to the French when the matter is French, and to the English when the excellence is reputedly theirs, perhaps no excuse is needed for going often to the Southern States, even to plantation life for instance, whilst American corn meal has the front place. Down in that land of large estates and extensive operations, there used to be places where from year's end to year's end the mush cauldron never stopped boiling, except as it was emptied and replenished once in every twenty-four hours, that being the time considered necessary for the meal to cook before it could become wholesome food for the scores of laborers whose principal food it was. These kettles, some with mush and some with hominy, hung in huge fireplaces, and were tended by old crones, with stirring paddles like boat oars, day and night, like the witches in Macbeth with their "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble." How should we like to make mush for the folks that way? There are a good many degrees between ten-minute mush and twenty-four hour mush, and as to the stirring there are very few hotels where even ten minutes can be bestowed upon that part as a regular thing. Fortunately there is little need of it. Heat and steam are restless enough to keep up a very fair bubble of themselves without much manual labor. It seems to be with corn meal as with rice, it will take up a certain amount of water and no more. Ten ounces of rice will absorb a quart of water and all the water that is added beyond that only tends to separate the particles and make a blue gruel. Five ounces of corn meal will do the same as the ten ounces of rice, absorb a quart of water and no more. With a much less proportion of water the meal can never be well cooked, because the finer particles take up the water first and the course grains always must remain raw and hard, no matter how long on the fire. Rice will cook well done in three-quarters of an hour; corn meal requires about three hours to reach the same point, although it may be passibly good after only one or two hours boiling.

To reduce the time of cooking some people steep the meal in water several hours before. There is nothing to be said against this except that it is likelier to be forgot or neglected than remembered and becomes a cause of irregularity under the usual hotel conditions.