Skip to main content
Main

Maize Meal Porridge

A simple porridge made from maize meal, water, salt, and butter, boiled until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Maize Meal Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil a saucepan half full of water.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal gradually while stirring with the other hand.

  3. Thicken to taste and boil for 5 to 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the butter and serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

Indian meal
Its starch swells in the hot water and thickens the liquid into a porridge.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the meal gradually. Cornmeal starch clumps when it hits hot water all at once. Sprinkling it in slowly while stirring separates the grains so each one hydrates evenly and the porridge 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes