Common Sense in the Household 50

Common Sense in the Household 50

Beat the hominy smooth; stir in the milk, then the butter, salt, and

sugar; next the eggs, which should first be well beaten; then the soda,

dissolved in hot water; lastly the flour.

 

There are no more delicious or wholesome muffins than these, if rightly

mixed and quickly baked.

 

 

BELLE’S MUFFINS.

 

3 pints of flour.

1 quart of milk.

2 eggs.

2 tablespoonfuls cream tartar.

1 tablespoonful soda.

1 tablespoonful salt.

 

Sift the cream tartar with the flour. Beat the eggs very light.

Dissolve the soda in hot water. Bake in rings in a quick oven.

 

 

CORN BREAD.

 

There is a marked difference between the corn-meal ground at the South,

and that which is sent out from Northern mills. If any one doubts this,

it is not she who has perseveringly tried both kinds, and demonstrated

to her own conviction that the same treatment will not do for them. An

intelligent lady once told me that the shape of the particles composing

the meal was different—the one being round and smooth, the other

angular. I am inclined to believe this. The Southern meal is certainly

coarser, and the bread made from it less compact. Moreover, there is a

partiality at the North for yellow meal, which the Southerners regard

as only fit for chicken and cattle-feed. The yellow may be the sweeter,

but I acknowledge that I have never succeeded in making really nice

bread from it.

 

Indian meal should be purchased in small quantities, except for a very

large family. It is apt to heat, mould, and grow musty, if kept long in

bulk or in a warm place. If not sweet and dry, it is useless to expect

good bread or cakes. As an article of diet, especially in the early

warm days of spring, it is healthful and agreeable, often acting as a

gentle corrective to bile and other disorders. In winter, also, it is

always acceptable upon the breakfast or supper table, being warming and

nutritious. In summer the free use of it is less judicious, on account

of its laxative properties. As a kindly variation in the routine of

fine white bread and baker’s rolls, it is worth the attention of every

housewife. “John and the children” will like it, if it approximates the

fair standard of excellence; and I take it, my good friend—you who have

patiently kept company with me from our prefatory talk until now—that

you love them well enough to care for their comfort and likings.

 

“My husband is wild about corn bread,” a wife remarked to me not a

hundred years ago, “but I won’t make it for him; it is such a bother!

And if I once indulge him, he will give me no peace.”

 

Beloved sister, I am persuaded better things of you. Good husbands

cannot be spoiled by petting. Bad ones cannot be made worse—they may be

made better. It seems a little thing, so trifling in its consequences,

you need not tire further your aching back and feet to accomplish

it—the preparation of John’s favorite dish when he does not expect the

treat—to surprise him when he comes in cold and hungry, by setting

before him a dish of hot milk-toast, or a loaf of corn bread, brown and

crisp without, yellow and spongy within, instead of the stereotyped

pile of cold slices, brown or white. If he were consulted, he would

say, like the generous soul he is—“Don’t take one needless step for

me, dear.” And he would mean it. But for all that, he will enjoy your

little surprise—ay! and love you the better for it. It is the “little

by little” that makes up the weal and woe of life.

 

May I make this digression longer yet, by telling you what I overheard

a husband say to a wife the other day when he thought no one else was

near enough to hear him. He is no gourmand, but he is very partial to

a certain kind of cruller which nobody else can make, he thinks, so

well as his little wife. It so chanced that in frying some of them,

she scalded her hand badly. After it was bandaged, she brought up a

plate of the cakes for luncheon. He looked at them, then at her, with a

loving, mournful smile.

 

“I can understand now,” said he, “how David felt when his men-of-war

brought him the water from the well of Bethlehem.”

 

Then he stooped and kissed the injured fingers. Yet he has been married

twenty years. I was not ashamed that my eyes were moist. I honored him

the more that his were dim.

 

This is my lesson by the wayside _apropos_ to corn-bread.

 

And now again to business.

 

 

 

_Receipts for Bread made of Northern Indian Meal._

 

 

NONPAREIL CORN BREAD. ✠

 

2 heaping cups of Indian meal.

1 cup of flour.

3 eggs.

2½ cups milk.

1 tablespoonful lard.

2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.

1 teaspoonful soda.

2 tablespoonfuls cream-tartar.

1 tablespoonful salt.

 

Beat the eggs very thoroughly—whites and yolks separately—melt the

lard, sift the cream-tartar and soda into the meal and flour while

yet dry, and stir this in at the last. Then, to borrow the direction

scribbled by a rattle-tongued girl upon the above receipt, when she

sent it to me—“_beat like mad!_” Bake quickly and steadily in a

buttered mould. Half an hour will usually suffice. In cutting corn

bread _hold the knife perpendicularly_ and cut toward you.

 

 

CORN MEAL MUFFINS.

 

Mix according to the foregoing receipt, only a little thinner, and bake

in rings or small pattypans. All kinds of corn bread should be baked

quickly and eaten while hot.

 

 

RISEN CORN BREAD.

 

1 pint Indian meal.

2 cups risen sponge, taken from your regular baking of wheat bread.

½ cup molasses, _or_, what is better, 4 tablespoonfuls white sugar.

1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.

1 tablespoonful lard, melted.

1 cup flour, or enough for stiff batter.

 

Mix well, put to rise in a buttered mould until very light. Bake one

hour. It is well to scald the meal and stir in while blood-warm.

 

 

STEAMED CORN BREAD. ✠

 

2 cups Indian meal.

1 cup flour.

2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.

2½ cups “loppered” milk, or buttermilk.

1 teaspoonful soda.

1 teaspoonful salt.

1 heaping tablespoonful lard, melted.

 

Beat very hard and long, put in buttered mould, tie a coarse cloth

tightly over it, and if you have no steamer, fit the mould in the top

of a pot of boiling water, taking care it does not touch the surface of

the liquid. Lay a close cover over the cloth tied about the mould, to

keep in all the heat. Steam one hour and a half, and set in an oven

ten minutes. Turn out upon a hot plate, and eat while warm.

 

This will do for a plain dessert, eaten with pudding-sauce.

 

 

CORN-MEAL CRUMPETS.

 

1 quart Indian meal.

1 quart boiled milk.

4 tablespoonfuls yeast.

2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.

2 heaping tablespoonfuls lard, or butter, or half-and-half.

1 saltspoonful salt.

 

Scald the meal with the boiling milk, and let it stand until lukewarm.

Then stir in the sugar, yeast, and salt, and leave it to rise

five hours. Add the melted shortening, beat well, put in greased

muffin-rings, set these near the fire for fifteen minutes, and bake.

Half an hour in a quick oven ought to cook them.

 

Never cut open a muffin or crumpet of any kind, least of all one made

of Indian meal. Pass the knife lightly around it to pierce the crust,

then break open with the fingers.

 

 

 

_Receipts for Corn Bread made of Southern Indian Meal._

 

JOHNNY CAKE.

 

1 teacupful sweet milk.

1 teacupful buttermilk.

1 teaspoonful salt.

1 teaspoonful soda.

1 tablespoonful melted butter.

 

Enough meal to enable you to roll it into a sheet half an inch thick.

Spread upon a buttered tin, or in a shallow pan, and bake forty

minutes. As soon as it begins to brown, baste it with a rag tied to a

stick and dipped in melted butter. Repeat this five or six times until it is brown and crisp. Break—not cut it up—and eat for luncheon or tea, accompanied by sweet or buttermilk.