Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen (4 page)

I was more interested in the pioneer version, kernels shattered into “rice-size” pieces and then cooked. Like any modern cook, I turned to the food processor and quickly learned that modern isn't better. I experimented with a variety of pulsing techniques. No matter what I tried, the resulting pieces were either too big or too small. The processor's action chops or slices but doesn't shatter. And, worse yet, the hard germ, or the seed-to-be, was processed along with the rest of the grain.

Time to rethink, consider the pioneer experience, and search the garage. I found an old metal mixing bowl, a couple blocks of wood, and our old eight-pound sledgehammer. After a bit of steel-wool cleanup, I had the equipment to try the nineteenth-century pounding method. I just needed the right place. Then I remembered the tree stump.

A couple of years ago, a storm took out the top two-thirds of an old basswood tree. We cut it off about three feet from the ground, thinking it might make a nice, natural outdoor table. The inside had hollowed out a bit, just the right size to hold the mixing bowl. I put two-by-fours in first to support the bottom of the bowl and to provide an opposing hard surface for the sledge blows. I poured in about a cup of posole-treated kernels and began pounding. Mimicking the pioneer-described pestle technique, I lifted the sledge up and down, rather like operating a dasher on a butter churn, striking the corn with the top of the hammer instead of the normal striking face. At first the kernels had a tendency to jump. Some of them even landed out of the bowl. As more of them cracked, the mass tended to stay in the bottom. After about five minutes, I had enough to pour into a large mesh strainer, and sifted out the corn that was the desired size of a grain of rice. A good bit more remained. More pounding. More sifting. After about fifteen minutes I had it all pounded.

I put the hominy grains in a large bowl and filled it with water. I stirred the grains with my fingers and watched the cracked-off germ bits rise, if not completely to the surface of the water at least to the top of the sinking grains. I was able to whoosh and pick out most of the germ. Now, time to cook!

There are two cooking steps: swelling the grains and then frying them. I coaxed the hominy to plumpness in a slow cooker, covering the cup of grains with three cups of water and setting it on low. Several hours later the shattered hominy shards were almost back to the size of the original whole kernels. I drained off the remaining water and patted the hominy dry between paper towels. I couldn't wait to taste. I put some in a bowl with a bit of butter and shared with my husband. He had the best description of its somewhat elusive, delicious flavor and texture: “It's like liquid popcorn.”

Frying the hominy in butter until it turned golden added a nice crisp layer to the slightly chewy grains. The flavor is mild and certainly
corn-like. There is a subtle sweetness. It is easy to see why pioneers hungered for this hominy and why city folk who happened upon it wrote of its fine qualities.

Still, making hominy this way is a lot of work. I looked at the sack of coarsely ground
cornmeal I used for my corn dodgers and wondered if I could skip the pounding. Would this easily available corn product work? A few hours later I had my answer. By golly, it did. I did have some preparation work to do, however. The cornmeal I use is ground with the hulls on and the germ attached. I sifted the cornmeal through a fairly fine kitchen sieve to remove particles smaller than about one-quarter the size of a grain of long-grain rice, smaller than the cracked corn Lincoln, other pioneers, and I made, maybe half or even quarter the size, depending on how much pestle “oomph” was applied.

I put the more finely milled cornmeal that had come through the sieve to the side for use the next time I made corn bread or Johnnycakes. I then put about a half cup of the corn remaining in the sieve into a two-quart bowl, filled the bowl with water, and stirred gently with my fingers as I had done with my home-pounded version. The hull chaff and some of the germ floated to the top. I tipped the bowl slightly and whooshed it off. Then I let my slow cooker, filled with water, do the rest of the work. After four hours or so, the grains had swollen up about four times, to about the size of a grain of rice. I drained them and put them in the refrigerator after taking a forkful to test. This version had the same nice light corn flavor, but it had a bit of a bite to it. The texture was starchier, so instead of cooking up easily into individual grains, it could be made into a corn cake that would hold together when carefully flipped. Definitely not mush.

On Christmas morning I put a dab of butter into my frying pan and patted out a flat cake of my newly made hominy. Crusted golden brown after about ten minutes over a slow fire, I gently flipped it over and browned the other side. It was, indeed, a delight … and the beginning of a new holiday breakfast tradition. As to gifts under the tree, I might just spend some summer afternoons pounding up some posole grains to package for an authentic experience.

In the fourteen months between Nancy Lincoln's
death on October 5, 1818, and Thomas Lincoln's
marriage to Sarah Bush
Johnston on
December 2, 1819, Abraham and his sister, Sarah, probably made many pots of hominy as well as other common
cornmeal dishes, Johnnycake, hoecake, cornmeal mush, owendow, and various types of simple
corn breads made largely from cornmeal. Sometimes, depending on the seasonal produce from the farm, they might have made the bread with eggs, milk, and butter, but seldom would they have used
wheat
flour. Dennis Hanks reported that on the farm the
family raised corn and “sum wheat enuf for a cake on Sunday.”

Life was very different in the
Lexington, Kentucky, household of the
Todd family as it faced the same tragedy, the mother's death.
Children had died in both families as well. Lincoln's younger brother lived three days. Mary's younger brother died at the age of two, when she was four years old. Two year later, in 1825, Mary's mother died within days after giving birth to George, her seventh child in twelve years of marriage. In the motherless Todd household, the remaining six children didn't have the responsibilities that had fallen to Abraham and his sister, Sarah. Mary's eight-year-old brother, Levi, didn't have to do chores. Her two older sisters, Elizabeth, age twelve, and Frances, age ten, didn't have to manage the household or watch over the younger children—Mary, then six, Ann, age one, and the baby.

The Todd household was affluent and
owned slaves. Mary's maternal grandmother lived in a large house on the same block. By most accounts, Robert Smith Todd, Mary's father, was largely absent from home. The job of raising his children fell to their grandmother, his sisters, and the slaves who kept the house running.
Mammy Sally, as she was called by the family, was part nursemaid and part disciplinarian. A woman called “
Old Chaney” was the cook,
Nelson served at table and did the marketing, and
Jane was another member of the household. Details of life in the Todd household are
scarce, but it is not hard to imagine that the children might wander through the kitchen and sit for a spell watching Old Chaney prepare
food. There is one suggestion of such closeness. When Mary was thirteen, she rode her new pony out to the home of renowned Whig politician Henry Clay on a lark. Clay had been a visitor to the politically connected Todd home. She is quoted as saying, “Mammy will be wild! When I put salt in her coffee this morning she called me a limb of Satan.”

Corn-based breads would have been different in the
Todd household as well. In a thriving city with fancy bakeries turning out elaborate cakes for society parties and political events,
wheat
flour would have been a common staple in most upper-class kitchens. As a recipe for “Superior Johnny-Cakes” from Goshen, New York, printed in the
Albany Cultivator
and reprinted in the
Tennessee Farmer
in 1836 noted, “The addition of wheat flour will be found to be a great improvement in the art of making these cakes. Those who have not eggs will find it will do very well without.”

Similarly, the recipe for cornmeal rusk from
Farmer and Gardener
, also reprinted in
Tennessee Farmer
, is described as “among the many delicacies in the form of bread, which render the enjoyment of breakfast so acceptable, we know of none more deserving of notice than the one prepared according to the following recipe.”

Mary's father eventually remarried. His second wife had all she could do raising her own eight
children born between 1828 and 1841. Willful Mary went to a local boarding school and a French academy in Lexington, coming home for the weekends and holidays. Her oldest sister, Elizabeth, was the first to head to Springfield after her 1832 marriage to Ninian
Edwards, son of the governor of Illinois, who had come east to study at Lexington's Transylvania University. The other three daughters from the first marriage, Frances, Mary, and then Ann, joined Elizabeth in the free state and married Illinois men.

Some of the recipes from Old Chaney's kitchen may have followed them there to become part of the comfort of home.

CORN DODGERS

 

Texture and taste set the corn dodger apart from ordinary corn bread. When made with stone-ground
cornmeal, true dodgers have a crisp crust with a tender interior. The satisfying deep corn flavor makes them wonderful alongside a bowl of soup, or enjoyed just plain
.

CHOOSE STONE-GROUND CORNMEAL:
“Stone-ground” cornmeal is ground between two stones, a traditional process that produces a coarser meal with the kernel's hull and germ mostly intact. Most cooks find that stone-ground cornmeal has a more pronounced “corn” flavor than regular mass-produced cornmeal, which is ground with metal rollers. The nutritious hull and germ have been removed from regular cornmeal and the texture is usually finer. Stone-ground cornmeal is more perishable and should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer.

2 cups coarse cornmeal, preferably stone-ground

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon melted butter or bacon drippings, plus more for cooking dodgers

1 ½ cups boiling water

⅓ cup regular cornmeal, optional

Mix the coarse cornmeal and salt in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the center and pour in the butter or drippings. Pour the boiling water over the fat and stir carefully and thoroughly. Set aside to cool, 20 to 30 minutes. This should make a loose dough that you can form into dodgers shaped like ears of corn. Cornmeals vary, so you may need to add a bit more water or, if the mixture is too wet, add up to ¼ cup regular cornmeal. In making these additions, begin by adding less than you think necessary.

TO COOK ON THE STOVETOP:
Form the dodgers by placing about 2 tablespoons of dough in the palm of one hand and gently press the
dough into an oval about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Put an 8- to 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, melt about 1 tablespoon butter or drippings in the pan. Carefully place 6 of the formed dodgers in the hot skillet; don't crowd them. Lower the heat and cook until the bottoms are browned and the tops are firm and dry, about 8 to 10 minutes. Turn over carefully and finish cooking until browned on both sides, another 5 to 7 minutes. Repeat these steps with the remaining dodgers.

TO BAKE:
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Grease a baking sheet well. Form the dodgers as described above. Bake until firm throughout, about 15 to 20 minutes.

TIP FOR SUCCESS:
You can't rush corn dodgers. Patience will produce better results. You have to allow time first for the cornmeal–hot water mixture to cool and swell and then for the dodgers to cook through in the skillet. I've had them take as long as 12 minutes on a side.

Makes about 18 corn dodgers

RE-CREATED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.

EGG CORN BREAD

 

This corn bread emerges with a slightly crinkled crust and a moist, yet crumbly texture. The rich, egg taste rounds out the hearty corn flavors for the kind of bread Mary Lincoln would have remembered fondly from her childhood
.

¾ cup water

¼ cup coarse cornmeal, preferably stone-ground

2 large eggs, separated

1 cup milk

1 cup regular cornmeal

½ teaspoon salt, or less to taste

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon butter, melted

In a saucepan, bring the water to a simmer. Gradually stir in the coarse cornmeal and cook over low heat until it thickens, about 10 minutes. Set this cornmeal mush aside until cool, 20 to 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously grease a deep, 9-inch round baking dish. Transfer the cooled cornmeal mush to a mixing bowl. Combine the egg yolks and milk and stir into the mush with a whisk or fork until the mixture is smooth. Add the regular cornmeal, salt, baking soda, and melted butter. Mix well. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish.

Bake until the bread is firm in the center and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 40 to 50 minutes. Loosen the edges from the pan while still warm. Cool before slicing.

Makes 1 round loaf, to serve 6 to 8

ADAPTED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.