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Fine White Hominy or Grits
Take two cups to two quarts salted water, soak over night, and boil three quarters of an hour in a custard kettle; serve with milk three quarters of an hour in a custard kettle; serve with milk and sugar, or when cold slice and fry.
A bare-bones formula for grits, typical of a period when every cook already knew what the pot should look like. The text repeats a phrase mid-sentence, an obvious typesetting slip in the original.
- Custard kettleThis is a double boiler — an inner pot set over simmering water in an outer one. Grits scorch and stick over direct heat, so the gentle indirect cooking is the point of the instruction, not an affectation.
- The ratioTwo cups (of hominy, unstated in the original) to two quarts of water is 1:4 by volume, which gives a thick, spoonable porridge once the soaking water is absorbed. The recipe says nothing about draining; the phrasing suggests the grain simply goes on to boil in its soaking water.
- Overnight soakThe soaking is presumably what makes three quarters of an hour enough. 'Fine white hominy' most likely corresponds to a finely ground white hominy grit; unsoaked coarse grits generally take considerably longer.
- Hominy versus grits'Hominy' in period usage is corn treated with lye or wood ash to loosen the hulls, then dried; 'grits' is the same corn coarsely ground. Modern stone-ground white grits are the closest match. Instant and quick grits will not behave the same way and need none of this treatment.
- SaltThe salt goes into the soaking water, which seasons the grain from the inside. Roughly a teaspoon per quart is a reasonable starting point; the original assumes the cook's judgment.
- Frying the leftoversPour the hot grits into a loaf pan or shallow dish, chill until firm overnight, then turn out and cut into half-inch slabs. Fry in bacon fat or butter over medium-high heat until a crust forms — this is the same principle as fried polenta or scrapple.
- YieldTwo cups of dry grits makes a generous eight to ten breakfast servings. Halve or quarter it for a household of two.
Hominy reached Southern kitchens directly from Native American practice: soaking field corn in lye made from wood ash, a process now generally called nixtamalization, loosens the hulls and makes the grain far more nutritious. Ground coarse, it became grits, the standard Southern breakfast starch through the nineteenth century and beyond. It was often served sweet, with milk and sugar, in the same manner as oatmeal or cracked wheat, though buttered savory grits were eaten in the period as well; the cheese-laden grits familiar today is a later habit. The direction to slice and fry the cold remainder is thrift of the ordinary kind: the same treatment given to leftover cornmeal mush, polenta and rice throughout the period, turning yesterday's porridge into today's griddle cake.