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Jolly Boys
Jeannie Brayton.
One quart corn meal; scald and cool; one pint of flour, two eggs, one teaspoon soda, two of cream tartar, a little milk, salt; make as thick as pancakes, and fry in hot lard. Nice for breakfast.
A drop batter of scalded cornmeal leavened with soda and cream of tartar, fried in fat like a thick pancake or fritter. The recipe assumes a cook who knows what pancake batter should look like and gives no yield, pan, or time.
- Scald the meal first, and let it coolPouring boiling water over the cornmeal gelatinizes the starch and softens the grit, which is what keeps these tender rather than sandy. Adding eggs and leavening while the mush is still hot will cook the eggs and kill the rise, so cool it to lukewarm before going on.
- Quantities in modern measureA quart of cornmeal is about 4 cups and a pint of flour about 2 cups. That is a very large batch by current standards; halving or quartering it is sensible for a household of two or three.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda to two of cream of tartar is the standard nineteenth-century homemade baking powder, roughly balanced. About four teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder substitutes for the pair if you prefer, in which case omit both.
- "A little milk" is the whole judgement callThe milk is the only variable left, and the target is stated: as thick as pancake batter, thick enough to hold its shape briefly on the spoon. Scalded meal thickens as it stands, so add milk last and expect to add more if the bowl sits.
- Fry promptlyCream of tartar and soda react as soon as they are wet. Get the batter into the fat within a few minutes of mixing rather than letting the bowl rest.
- The fat and the heatThe recipe says only "hot lard"; any neutral fat or shortening will stand in. As a modern starting point, roughly a quarter inch in a heavy skillet at around 360-375F suits a batter this thick. Drop by large spoonfuls, allow room to spread, and turn once when the edges set and the underside is deep gold, judging by colour rather than the clock.
- Yield and servingThe full quantity makes something like two to three dozen cakes. The recipe recommends them only as "nice for breakfast"; fried cornmeal cakes were commonly served hot with butter or a syrup. They go leaden if held, so fry in batches and serve as they come.
"Jolly boys" is a New England name for a fried cornmeal cake, and the term shows up in nineteenth-century American community cookbooks with little explanation because none was needed at the time. The technique behind it is much older than the name: scalding cornmeal with boiling water was the standard way to make a coarse native grain palatable, common to hasty pudding, johnnycake, spoon bread, and the whole family of griddle preparations. What dates this particular version is the leavening. Soda paired with twice its measure of cream of tartar was how a cook made her own baking powder before commercial tins were trusted or cheap, and the survival of that pairing in print, alongside the direction to fry in lard, places the recipe firmly in the era of the wood range and the household fat crock. Like most entries in The Home Cook Book, it carries a contributor's name, Jeannie Brayton, because the book was compiled from the recipes of local women and sold to raise money, and the signature was both credit and warranty.