BAKED HOMINY

1 c. cold boiled small hominy
2 c. milk
1 tsp. butter
1 tsp. white sugar
Salt
3 eggs

To a cupful of cold boiled hominy (small kind) allow two cups of milk, a heaping teaspoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of white sugar, a little salt, and three eggs. Beat the eggs very light, yolks and whites separately. Work the yolks first into the hominy, alternately with the melted butter. When thoroughly mixed, put in sugar and salt, and go on beating while you soften the batter gradually with the milk. Be careful to leave no lumps in the hominy. Lastly stir in the whites, and bake in a buttered pudding-dish until light, firm and delicately browned.

This can be eaten as a dessert, but it is a delightful vegetable, and the best substitute that can be devised for green corn pudding.

From Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: While grits are making something of a resurgence (or at least expanding their range from their native habitat in the South where they never went away) hominy continues its slow sleepy slide into obscurity. Grits are ground corn, while hominy is more often whole, or at most cracked, kernels. The process of hominy-making is complicated and somewhat nasty (soaking in lye is involved) and corn is easy enough to preserve by simple drying that the latter is more commonly practiced. Mrs. Harland makes a lengthy note about the differences between "small" and "large" hominy, but we find no indication that this distinction is still made today. Use what you can find.

Hominy can occasionally be found in canned form in supermarkets, which would probably be the easiest way to make this recipe. It is a form of simple soufflé, as you might have guessed from the folded-in egg whites. While it is unlikely to rise nearly as much as a "regular" soufflé, this also eliminates concerns about the delicate version's tendency to collapse upon removal from the oven.

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