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Fried Cornmeal Nut Cakes
2 cupfuls yellow cornmeal 2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 3 cupfuls boiling water 1 teaspoonful salt 1 egg ½ cupful chopped nut meats Bring water and salt to boil, stir in cornmeal, add nut meats, and stir and cook ten minutes. Remove from fire and add egg well beaten, and Breads, etc. melted Crisco. Turn into Criscoed tin and cool. When cold, slice and fry in hot Crisco. Serve with honey or maple syrup. ۱ Sufficient for six or eight slices.
This is fried cornmeal mush with nuts folded in — a stiff porridge set overnight, sliced and pan-fried. It works, but only if the mush is genuinely cold and firm before it meets the pan.
- The hinge: chill it hardWarm or barely cooled mush will slump and break apart in the fat. Pack it into the pan, press the surface smooth, cover once cool and refrigerate at least six hours, preferably overnight.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening and is still sold; any neutral solid shortening, or a neutral oil for the frying, will serve much the same purpose. The book specifies it throughout because it is an advertisement for the product.
- "Criscoed tin"A greased tin, small enough that the block sets a good couple of inches deep. Lining it with parchment or plastic film makes unmoulding the chilled block far easier than greasing alone.
- Cooking the mushTen minutes of hard stirring is the minimum. Cornmeal at this 2:3 ratio thickens fast and scorches faster — use a heavy pan, keep the heat moderate, and cook until the mush pulls cleanly from the sides. Coarser stone-ground meal may want fifteen to twenty minutes.
- Adding the eggLet the mush cool a few minutes off the heat before beating in the egg, or it will scramble in streaks.
- Nut meatsThe recipe does not say which; walnuts, hickory nuts and pecans were all commonly used in American baking of the period. Chop them fine; large pieces create weak points where the slices snap.
- Slicing and fryingCut slices about half an inch thick. Fry in shallow fat at 350–375F, three to four minutes a side, and leave them alone until a crust forms — turning early tears the surface.
- YieldSix to eight slices, as stated, which is two to four servings at breakfast.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written for Procter & Gamble by Marion Harris Neil to persuade American cooks that a hydrogenated cottonseed shortening could replace both butter and lard, and every recipe in it is built around that argument. The dish itself is far older than the product: fried mush — boiled cornmeal set solid, sliced and browned in fat — was a staple of American breakfast tables through the nineteenth century, a thrifty way of turning yesterday's porridge into something crisp, and a close relation of Italian fried polenta and of Pennsylvania scrapple, which adds meat to the same set block. The chopped nuts and the honey or maple syrup here push it toward the sweeter end of that tradition.