Hasty Pudding.
Boil in a pot or kettle about six quarts of water, leaving room for the addition of the meal; mix a pint bowl full of Indian meal and cold water with a small spoonful of salt. When the water boils, stir this into it. After thirty or forty minutes, stir in four or five handfuls of dry meal, and let it boil as much longer; then add more dry meal. Taste it to see if it is salt enough. Stir it very often to prevent its burning. Most people make it too thick, and do not cook it half long enough. Boil it, altogether, at least two hours. When taken out, it should be so soft that it will in a few minutes settle down smooth in the dish. If you wish to fry it, put a spoonful of water into each deep pan or dish into which it is to be put, to keep it from sticking.
Hasty Pudding fried.
Cut cold pudding in slices the thickness of your finger, and lay them on the griddle. More fat will be necessary than for buckwheat cakes, but it fries much slower. If the fire is right it will be ready to turn in fifteen minutes, and will be brown. Turn it and let it lie about half as long as on the first side.
This is a very good breakfast for a winter morning. It does very nicely to be laid in the dripping-pan, and set into a stove oven; it will in that case not need turning, and of course will absorb less fat. It will take forty minutes to brown it in the stove.
The sour apples that drop from the trees early in the autumn, make an excellent pan pie without being pared. The skin then contains much of the richness of the apple, and is often so thin, that when cooked, it cannot be distinguished from the pulp. There are few articles of diet so healthy and palatable as pan pie, that are prepared with so little trouble and expense.
Where a brick oven is used, the following is a good receipt.
Take a potters ware pan, that will hold a gallon, and fill it with apples, quartered and cored; in winter pare the apples; roll out a piece of light bread dough, and lay upon the top; butter the edge of the pan to prevent the dough from sticking to it; cut an opening in the crust to allow the steam to escape, and put it into the oven. After about two hours draw it out and remove the crust, sweeten it with good molasses, or, if you choose, coarse sugar. Some persons use both. Put in a few sticks of cinnamon or some allspice, and a piece of butter as large as a nut. Stir it up thoroughly from the bottom. Your taste must guide you as to the quantity of sugar or molasses. Break up the bread crust and put into the apple. If it is very moist, return the pan uncovered to the oven; but if dry enough, cover it with an old plate; let it stand four or five hours.
There are various ways of making this dish. Some persons prefer to put in the molasses at first, and others use only sugar. It is very easy to improve it by rolling a little butter into the dough, exactly as in pie-crust; and if this is done once only, it makes the crust much more tender. Some persons put any crusts or pieces of bread they happen to have, into the apple, and if the crust that was baked with it is thin, it is a very good way.