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Chicken Tamale Dressing
1 cup corn-meal 1 tablespoonful butter or bacon fat 1 cup cooked chicken, chopped fine 1 cup stoned olives 4 tablespoonfuls catsup 1 tablespoonful onionjuice 1 cup tomatoes 3 tablespoonfuls cil Cayenne pepper
An ingredient list for a cornmeal-and-chicken dressing in the tamale-pie manner, given as quantities only. The proportions tell you most of what you need: a cup of cornmeal to a cup of tomatoes and a cup of chopped meat makes a soft mush that sets as it bakes.
- The measurementsEach "I" here is the numeral 1. Read the list as 1 cup cornmeal, 1 tablespoon butter or bacon fat, 1 cup chopped cooked chicken, 1 cup stoned olives, 4 tablespoons catsup, 1 tablespoon onion juice, 1 cup tomatoes, 3 tablespoons oil, and cayenne to taste.
- No method is givenThe book prints the quantities without directions. Handled as a tamale dressing, the cornmeal would be cooked to a thick mush with the tomatoes and enough water or broth to hydrate it, the remaining ingredients stirred in, and the whole baked until set — but that sequence, and the amount of added liquid, are inferred, not stated in the original.
- Corn-mealPlain yellow or white cornmeal, not self-rising cornmeal mix and not masa harina. Fine or medium grind absorbs liquid faster and gives a smoother set; stone-ground coarse meal will want extra liquid and longer cooking.
- Onion juiceA period shortcut for onion flavor without pieces: a halved onion pressed against a grater or squeezed in a cloth. A tablespoon of grated onion, or half a small onion very finely minced and softened in the fat, gives the same effect.
- CatsupPeriod catsups varied widely, and homemade versions in particular were often thinner and more sharply spiced than the standard modern bottle. If four tablespoons of today's ketchup reads sugary against the cornmeal, cut it with a spoonful of vinegar, or use half tomato paste.
- Olives"Stoned" means pitted. A whole cup is a lot of salt entering the dish, so hold back on any added salt until the mush is seasoned at the end. The original does not say what kind; halving them distributes them better.
- The oilThree tablespoons of oil on top of the butter or bacon fat is generous by modern taste and keeps the mush tender rather than stiff. Two tablespoons is enough if you would rather it firm up cleanly for slicing.
- Oven and yieldThe original specifies neither baking, temperature, nor yield. If you do bake it, something around 350F for 35 to 45 minutes, until set through and browned at the edges, is a reasonable modern starting point, and the quantities would make roughly four to six servings as a side or a light main dish — all of this is estimate, not instruction from the book.
Books of left-overs were a fixture of American household publishing in the first decades of the twentieth century, when thrift was framed as a domestic skill rather than a hardship, and cold roast poultry was the recurring problem they were written to solve. This entry belongs to the tamale-pie family: a cornmeal mush enriched with meat, tomato, olives and chile heat, which is generally said to have spread from Mexican and Californian cooking into mainstream Anglo-American cookbooks in the early decades of the century, usually stripped of the corn husk, the masa and the steaming that define an actual tamal. The olives and the cayenne may be what remained of the borrowing, and "tamale" in these pages generally signals no more than cornmeal plus tomato plus a little heat. Calling it a dressing rather than a pie places it as an accompaniment, the sort of dish meant to stretch a cup of yesterday's chicken across a full table.