Corn Meal Mush or Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mush
Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a clean pot.
Add 1 tablespoon of salt and remove any scum from the surface.
Take a handful of corn meal in one hand and stir the boiling water with the other. Gradually add the corn meal while stirring until the mixture is thick enough to stand a stick in it. Continue stirring for a little longer.
Reduce the heat and cook gently for about 30 minutes until it bubbles.
Serve
Pour into a deep basin and serve hot or cold with milk, butter, syrup, sugar, or with 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
- Corn meal
- Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch swells and sets while cooking in water.
- Water
- Cooks the corn meal, hydrating its starch so the mixture thickens and becomes soft.
The step that matters
Adding the corn meal gradually while stirring. Dumping corn meal into boiling water at once forms lumps that stay dry inside. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the grains separated so they hydrate evenly and the mush thickens smoothly.
“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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