Cooking for profit

One of the floating paragraphs of the day is concerning a noted British journalist who cannot bring himself to like corn meal and says unfavorable things about it Buch as saying it is nothing but oatmeal with a flavor of mice. He has evidently been trying yellow meal, and probably that not properly cooked. An early training "down south*' convinced the writer of these lines that there is much more in corn meal than is generally supposed, and various people who have tried his methods have expressed a pleased surprise. It is no use, however, to try to gain favor tor yellow corn meal. Its strong flavor may be agreeable to such as have been accustomed to it since childhood, but their preferences will not be shared by many. Always use white corn meal, coarsely ground and free from flour, make the mush with all the water it will take up, have it as soft and jellylike to fry as it can well be cut and bandied when cold ; be careful to salt it right and fry it handsomely and you will find corn meal in its different forms of mush 3nd milk, fried mush, corn bread, muffins, batter-cakes, corn meal puddings, and others, an article so pleasant to the palate that it soon comes to be regarded as one of the indispensibles. While it is true the negro cooks of the south have had almost the monopoly of the art of cooking com meal it will not do to admit that what they accomplish through the simple habit of doing, cannot as well be done by the exercise of intelligent judgement. Take 2 heaping cnps white com meal, 8 cups water. 1 rounded tablespoon salt. Where the mush has to be made on a cook stove, a cast pot with feet, to raise the bottom an inch from the fire, is the best vessel to use. It lessens the tendency to burn and reduces the waste if the inside is brushed over with a touch of lard or drippings. Put the salt in the water, boil, and sprinkle the dry meal in with one hand while you beat with an egg-beater or spoon in the other. Put on the lid, and If-t simmer with the steam shut in for about three hours. If carefully cooked with a lid on and not bumt there will be as much mush as there was water put in, that is two quarts. Double the quantity needed for one meal should be made and" half put away to become cold to fry. For this purpose very slightly grease a pan, press the mush in evenly, and slightly brush over with melted lard again. No matter how little the grease, it prevents the formation of a crust by drying on top. Each quart of cold mush will cut into about ten slices or blocks for frying. Cost of mush and milk — com meal 4, milk 2 quarts 16—20 cents for 8 half pmtb milk and 8 half pints mush or 2Jc each pint bowl. Note — mush and milk served as a first course for supper or breakfast in hotels is but a spoonful in each bowl; perhaps a third, or less, of the restaurant bowl above specified. Hominy Muffins. Pound one pint of cold boiled hominy to a smooth paste, add to it half a pint of flour, one teaspoon ful of salt, a heaping tablespoonful of baking powder. Beat the yolks and whites of two eggs separately, add to the yolks two ounces of butter, same of sugar, and a scant pint of lukewarm milk. Mix these ingredients together and stir into the flour, mix quickly, pour the batter into hot, wellbuttered muffin rings, and bake in a quick oven.