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Browned Cornmeal Mush
3 cups hot cornmeal mush 1 egg Fine dry bread crumbs Mazola Karo Pour the mush, while hot, in a small, deep pan first rinsed with cold water. When cold, turn out, slice crosswise, then in halves. Dip each piece in fine dry crumbs, then in the egg slightly beaten with one fourth cup cold water, then in crumbs again. In the meantime, heat enough Mazola in a deep fat frying kettle to half fill it. Put the slices in a frying basket and fry until golden brown in the Mazola which should be hot enough to brown a bit of bread in forty counts, 375 degrees F. by the frying thermometer. Drain on crumpled paper and serve as a vegetable, or as a breakfast or luncheon dish with Karo.
A promotional-cookbook version of fried mush, straightforward once you know the brand names and give the mush enough time to set.
- The mush itselfThe recipe assumes you already have it. A common proportion is about 1 cup cornmeal to 4 cups salted water, whisked in gradually and cooked until it pulls from the pan; scale it to get the 3 cups called for.
- Mazola and KaroMazola is corn oil, then and now; any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. Karo is corn syrup, poured over the finished slices as you would maple syrup. The book was published to sell both.
- Rinsing the panThe cold-water rinse leaves a film that keeps the mush from bonding to the metal, so it turns out in one block. A loaf pan lined with plastic wrap does the same job more reliably.
- Chilling time"When cold" means thoroughly cold and firm, not merely cool. Give it at least four hours and preferably overnight in the refrigerator, or the slices slump and shed their coating in the fat.
- The breading orderCrumbs, then egg wash, then crumbs again. The first dry layer gives the wet, starchy surface something for the egg to grip; skipping it is the usual reason the coating slides off.
- Frying temperature375F is correct, and the "forty counts" bread test is the pre-thermometer equivalent. Fry in small batches; a crowded basket drops the oil temperature and the slices absorb fat instead of crisping.
- Drain and serveCrumpled paper is a paper towel. Serve immediately, as the crust softens within minutes.
- YieldDepending on how thickly it is sliced, 3 cups of mush set in a small deep pan gives around a dozen pieces.
Fried mush is a long-standing American breakfast, descended from the cornmeal porridges colonists learned from Native cooks and later called hasty pudding or simply mush. Leftover porridge poured into a pan, chilled, sliced and fried was thrift before it was tradition, and it survives regionally as scrapple's meatless cousin and, in Italian-American kitchens, as fried polenta. What marks this particular version as twentieth-century commercial writing is the breading and the deep kettle: older instructions often called for browning the slices in a skillet of drippings or butter. Books like this one were issued by corn-products manufacturers to demonstrate uses for their oil and syrup, which is why a dish of cornmeal is fried in corn oil and dressed with corn syrup.