Tie together half a dozen peach leaves, put them into a quart of milk, and set it on the fire to boil. When it has come to a hard boil, take out the leaves, but let the pot remain boiling on the fire. Then with a large wooden spoon in one hand, and some wheat flour in the other, thicken and stir it till it is about the consistence of a boiled custard. Afterwards throw in, one at a time, a dozen small bits of butter rolled in a thick coat of flour. You may enrich it by stirring in a beaten egg or two, a few minutes before you take it from the fire. When done, pour it into a deep dish, and strew brown sugar thickly over the top. Eat it warm.
Have ready on the fire a pot of boiling water. Stir into it by degrees (a handful at a time) sufficient Indian meal to make it very thick, and then add a very small portion of salt. You must keep the pot boiling on the fire all the time you are throwing in the meal; and between every handful, stir very hard with the mush-stick, (a round stick flattened at one end,) that the mush may not be lumpy. After it is sufficiently thick, keep it boiling for an hour longer, stirring it occasionally. Then cover the pot, and hang it higher up the chimney, so as to simmer slowly or keep hot for another hour. The goodness of mush depends greatly on its being long and thoroughly boiled. If sufficiency cooked, it is wholesome and nutritious, but exactly the reverse, if made in haste. It is not too long to have it altogether three of four hours over the fire; on the contrary it will be much the better for it.
Eat it warm; either with milk, or cover your plate with mush, make a hole in the middle, put some butter in the hole and fill it up with molasses.
Cold mush that has been left, may be cut into slices and fried in butter.
Burgoo is made precisely in the same manner as mush, but with oatmeal instead of Indian.
Cut up a quarter of a pound of butter in a pint of molasses, and warm them together till the butter is melted. Boil a quart of milk; and while scalding hot, pour it slowly over a pint of sifted Indian meal, and stir in the molasses and butter. Cover it, and let it steep for an hour. Then take off the cover, and set the mixture to cool. When it is cold, beat six eggs, and stir them gradually into it; add a table-spoonful of mixed cinnamon and nutmeg; and the grated peel of a lemon. Stir the whole very hard; put it into a buttered dish, and bake it two hours. Serve it up hot, and eat it with wine sauce, or with butter and molasses.