Corn-meal Mush or Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Make the mush
Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.
Add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt and remove any scum from the surface.
With one hand, take a handful of cornmeal and with the other, stir the boiling water with a pudding stick.
Gradually add the cornmeal while stirring until the mixture is thick enough for the stick to stand in it.
Continue stirring for a few more minutes over gentle heat.
Cook for about 30 minutes until it bubbles and puffs up.
Serve
Pour into a deep basin and serve hot or cold with milk, butter, syrup, sugar, or alongside meat and gravy.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch swells and sets while cooking.
- Water
- Cooks the cornmeal, hydrating its starch so the mixture thickens into a soft porridge.
The step that matters
Adding the cornmeal gradually while stirring. Dumping cornmeal into boiling water at once clumps it into lumps that stay dry inside. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the grains separated so they hydrate and thicken evenly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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