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._