Hoe Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix cornmeal and salt in a bowl.
Pour in boiling water and mix well with your hands to form thin cakes.
Fry
Heat enough fat in a frying pan to nearly cover the cakes.
Fry the cakes until brown on both sides.
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
- Corn meal
- Forms the main body of the cakes, and boiling water gelatinizes its starch to bind them.
- Fat for frying
- Conducts heat to the cakes and drives browning on the surface.
The step that matters
Pour in boiling water and mix well. Boiling water must be fully worked into the cornmeal so starch gelatinizes evenly, which lets the cakes hold their shape. Unmixed dry pockets can crumble in the pan.
“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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