Corn Mush
This is usually made by gradually sprinkling one pint of corn meal into three pints of boiling water, stirring constantly, adding two teaspoons of salt, and boiling slowly for three hours. Keep the kettle covered during the boiling, and add water if the mush becomes too thick. Serve with milk and sugar. Another method of cooking corn meal is as follows: Put a quart of water to boil. Stir a pint of cold milk with a pint of corn meal and a teaspoon of salt. When the water boils pour this mixture gradually into it, stirring all the time. There is less likelihood of the mush being lumpy when mixed in this way.
A plain cornmeal porridge, given here in two versions: the long-boiled one and a lump-proof variant that slurries the meal with cold milk first. Both are sound; the second is the one to use.
- The hinge: cold slurryDry meal hitting boiling water sets into lumps instantly. Mixing the pint of meal with a pint of cold milk before it goes into the pot is the whole trick, and it works with water in place of milk if you prefer.
- Meal to liquidThe first method is 1 part meal to 3 parts water by volume; the second is effectively 1 part meal to 3 parts liquid as well, counting the milk. Both are on the stiff side and will need topping up with water as they thicken.
- Corn mealNineteenth-century "corn meal" (and the older term "Indian meal") was generally stone-ground, often medium to coarse, and usually still had the germ in it, though finer bolted meal was also sold. Modern degerminated fine meal cooks faster and tastes flatter; coarse stone-ground meal or polenta grind is the closer match, and needs the longer time.
- Three hoursThat figure assumes coarse meal on a slow range or the back of a stove. Coarse stone-ground meal is done in 40 to 60 minutes; fine degerminated meal in 20 to 30. Long cooking does deepen the flavour, but three hours is not required for texture.
- SaltTwo teaspoons to a pint of meal is a fair amount of seasoning by modern habits, but not excessive for porridge served plain. Start with one and adjust.
- ScorchingCornmeal settles and catches. Use a heavy pot, keep the heat low, and stir down to the bottom every few minutes; a double boiler removes the problem entirely if you are cooking it out for the full time.
- YieldA pint of meal makes roughly six generous servings hot, or a loaf pan of set mush to slice and fry the next day.
Cornmeal mush is the English-language name for what Native American cooks taught colonists to make from maize, and it stayed on American breakfast tables under a shifting set of names: mush, hasty pudding, suppawn in the Hudson Valley, and later polenta by way of Italian immigration. It was the cheap hot cereal of the morning rather than a regional specialty. Cold leftover mush sliced and fried in fat, then eaten with syrup, was a routine use for the leftovers; the long boiling times in recipes like this one suit coarse stone-ground meal and a range held at a low steady heat.