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Fried Oatmeal or Hominy
Cold, cooked oatmeal or hominy Mazola Karo Pour the cereal, while hot, into a small bread pan or a pound baking powder can dipped in cold water. When cold, slice, dip in fine dry bread crumbs and brown first on one side, then the other, in a frying pan containing enough Mazola to keep it from sticking. Serve with Karo.
A thrift breakfast built from yesterday's porridge: the cereal is chilled into a loaf, sliced, crumbed and fried. The whole thing depends on the cereal setting firm enough to cut.
- Mazola and KaroBoth are brand names from the Corn Products Refining Company and both still exist. Mazola is corn oil; any neutral oil works. Karo is corn syrup; the recipe does not specify light or dark, and maple syrup is the usual substitute now.
- Hominy means the hot cerealNot canned whole hominy. This is hominy grits, or coarse corn grits, cooked to a thick porridge. Oatmeal likewise means porridge, not raw rolled oats.
- Cook the cereal stiffStandard breakfast consistency will not slice. Cook oatmeal or grits with roughly a third less liquid than usual, or simmer it down until a spoon stands briefly in it, and salt it — unsalted fried porridge is bleak.
- The pound baking powder canA cylindrical tin of about 2 cups' capacity, which gave round slices. A small loaf pan, a 15-oz can or a plastic container all serve; dipping the vessel in cold water keeps the hot cereal from clinging.
- Chill it properly"When cold" means fully set; allow several hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Slices about half an inch thick hold together; thinner ones collapse in the pan.
- Dry the slices before crumbingBlot each slice with a towel so the crumbs adhere in a thin even coat. A wet surface sheds its crumbs into the oil and the slice sticks and tears when turned.
- FryingMedium heat, enough oil to film the pan generously, about 4 to 5 minutes a side. Turn once only, when a firm crust has formed — early prodding is what breaks these.
- YieldA 2-cup mould gives 8 to 10 slices, enough for three or four at breakfast.
This is a corn-products advertising cookbook, and the recipe does its job quietly: two brand names, no measurements, and both of them owned by the same company. Mazola corn oil and Karo corn syrup were introduced by the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century, and booklets like this one were given away to teach cooks to reach for them in place of butter, lard and maple syrup. The dish itself is older than the brands. Frying leftover porridge into sliceable cakes is standard nineteenth-century American thrift cookery — the same logic that produced fried mush, scrapple and polenta fritters — and it belongs to a breakfast table where nothing cooked yesterday was thrown out. What the booklet adds is the crumb coating and the bottle of syrup.