Corn Mush
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mush
In a large pot, bring 4 quarts of water to a boil and add salt to taste.
Slowly stir in 1½ quarts of cornmeal, letting it sift through your fingers to prevent lumps.
Continue stirring until the mixture is thick enough to be stirred with one hand.
Let it boil slowly until fully cooked.
Cool and serve
Pour the mixture into a square pan to cool.
Once cooled, cut into pieces and fry for breakfast.
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 gelatinizes with heat and stirring.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal so its starch can swell and thicken the mixture.
The step that matters
Adding the cornmeal. Pouring cornmeal in slowly while stirring lets each grain hydrate separately. Dumping it in at once forms lumps that stay dry inside, leaving the mush uneven.
“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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