Hoe Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Pour enough boiling water over the cornmeal to moisten it.
Add salt and let it stand for 10 minutes.
Add more boiling water until the batter can drop from a spoon.
Cook and serve
Bake the cakes on a hot griddle greased with fat from salt pork.
Serve hot with a piece of butter on top of each cake.
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 body of the cake and sets as it cooks with the hot water.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal so it swells and forms a spoonable batter.
- Salt pork fat
- Greases the griddle so the cakes release and brown on the surface.
The step that matters
Adding boiling water until the batter drops from a spoon. Cornmeal absorbs water at different rates, so too little leaves a stiff batter that cracks, while too much makes cakes spread and turn gummy. Stopping at the spoon test gives a batter that holds its shape on the griddle.
“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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