But there is another reason for this dastardly crime and that is that "the germ lowers the keeping quality of the meal because its abundant fat easily becomes rancid."
In other words cornmeal made for sale in the North is denatured deliberately in order that the miller and the grocer may not run the risk of having a few sacks of it spoil on their hands occasionally! The consumer is not considered at all.
Ungastronomic America has meekly submitted to this outrage, largely because the facts of the case are not generally known. Gastronomic Americans, whose numbers are increasing rapidly, will insist on their rights, refusing to buy cornmeal from which most of the Flavor has been eliminated, and the North will in time eat as much corn bread as the South.
Personally, I agree with those who think it even more tasty than wheat bread. The only advantage wheat has is that, with yeast or baking powder, it can be made into a lighter and more porous loaf; but this advantage can be neutralized by baking the corn bread in thin cakes; and corn bread thus made is far more digestible than loaves of wheat bread as ordinarily made in America. A good quality of it is also much more easily and more quickly made at home. Soldiers and campers prefer it, partly for this reason. "It has been said," writes Dr. Woods, "that johnny cake is a corruption of journey cake, and that corn bread was so called because it could be so easily prepared on the road."[1]
GRIDDLE CAKES AND MAPLE SYRUP.
Our breakfasts, more than other meals, are made delectable by diverse corn dishes. Corn flakes, properly made are more flavorful than any others, and of all the varieties of griddle cakes, so dear to the American palate, none quite equals those made of corn. If these are at present seen less frequently on bills of fare than are wheat, rice, or buckwheat cakes, it is because of the way in which cornmeal is usually deprived of what most appeals to the palate.
Griddle cakes made of wheat are widely known as flannel cakes. I have never eaten any woolen stuff, but I imagine it might taste a good deal like the average "flannel" cake, though it would be much lighter. The French and German pancakes are far superior to our wheat cakes; but even to these I prefer the American corn griddle cakes, for which the whites of egg have been beaten stiff and added gradually; and I bask in the proud consciousness that my preference is thoroughly patriotic.
The liking for buckwheat cakes is to me a mystery and always has been, although as a boy I used to eat them with rich sausage gravy, which made them palatable. Buckwheat cakes are not eaten so much as they used to be, so maybe I am not alone in disliking them. For the gratification of those who do like them I quote from the New York "Sun" a characteristically American communication from "Middle Aged":
I saw in a store window to-day a sign "New Buckwheat," so I know people still eat buckwheat; but I doubt if it is as much eaten as it was in years back, say in the days when I was a youngster.
We always had buckwheat cakes for breakfast. Mother, sometimes father, used to stir the batter the night before in a curious tall, round, straight sided, brown earthenware pot with a handle on it, which was sacredly reserved for that purpose. I have never seen anywhere at any time another pot just like that one; and then it was set in just the right spot by the kitchen stove, for the batter to rise through the night.
In the morning they thinned this batter out just a little with water and then they fried the cakes; in our house on a long double griddle that covered two stove holes and on which you could cook two or three cakes at a time.
Every morning in winter we had those buckwheat cakes, light as a feather, and with them we always had sausages or pork chops; and such sausages and pork chops I have never seen since. Sausages, not as you see them nowadays as big around as a cigar and filled with some sort of pasty material, but big sausages stuffed with meat chopped coarse and that burst open when you fried them as if anxious to reveal to you their delightful, savory richness—I hope it is given to you to be able to recall such sausages; and pork chops from pigs country raised on nearby farms, a delight to the taste and always tender.
Whichever we had that morning, whether sausages or pork chops, we ate the sausage or the pork chop gravy on the cakes. Really the recollection moves me. My smiling mother—Heaven bless her!—never stinted me on the cakes; she gave me all I could eat. My father when I asked him for another sausage would sometimes ask me good-naturedly if I didn't think I had had enough; but he always handed over the sausage. And now, if you won't think I am quite a pig, I would like to say that I used to eat the last plate not with gravy but with butter and molasses on them; later we came to have syrup. And this sort of breakfast never did me any harm. There is a popular delusion that the ostrich has the hardiest of all stomachs, but really his would not for a moment bear comparison with that of the growing, outdoors boy.