ESSAYS-1 [87]
kinds of sauce, and sometimes without any sauce.
In the northern parts of North America, the common household bread throughout the country is composed of one part of Indian meal and one part of rye meal; and I much doubt whether a more wholesome, or more nourishing kind of bread can be made.
Rice is universally allowed to be very nourishing,--much more so even than wheat; but there is a circumstance well known to all those who are acquainted with the details of feeding the negro slaves in the southern states of North America, and in the West Indies, that would seem to prove, in a very decisive and satisfactory manner, that INDIAN CORN IS EVEN MORE NOURISHING THAN RICE.--In those countries, where rice and Indian Corn are both produced in the greatest abundance, the negroes have frequently had their option between these two kinds of Food; and have invariably preferred the latter.--The reasons they give for this preference they express in strong, though not in very delicate terms.--They say that "Rice turns to water in their bellies, and runs off;"--but "Indian Corn stays with them, and makes strong to work."
This account of the preference which negroes give to Indian Corn for Food, and of their reasons for this preference, was communicated to me by two gentlemen of most respectable character, well known in England, and now resident in London, who were formerly planters; one in Georgia, and the other in Jamaica.
The nutritive quantity which Indian Corn possessed, in a most eminent degree, when employed for fattening hogs and poultry, and for giving strength to working oxen, has long been universally known and acknowledged in every part of North America; and nobody in that country thinks of employing any other grain for those purposes.
All these facts prove to a demonstration that India Corn possesses very extraordinary nutritive powers; and it is well known that there is no species of grain that can be had so cheap, or in so great abundance;--it is therefore well worthy the attention of those who are engaged in providing cheap and wholesome Food for the Poor,--or in taking measures for warding off the evils which commonly attend a general scarcity of provisions, to consider in time, how this useful article of Food may be procured in large quantities, and how the introduction of it into common use can be most easily be effected.
In regard to the manner of using Indian Corn, there are a vast variety of different ways in which it may be prepared, or cooked, in order to its being used as Food.--One simple and obvious way of using it, is to mix it with wheat, rye, or barley meal, in making bread; but when it is used for making bread, and particularly when it is mixed with wheat flour, it will greatly improve the quality of the bread if the Indian meal, (the coarser part of the bran being first separated from it by sifting,) be previously mixed with water, and boiled for a considerable length of time,--two or three hours for instance, over a slow fire, before the other meal or flour is added to it.--This boiling, which, if the proper quantity of water is employed, will bring the mass to the consistency of a thin pudding, will effectually remove a certain disagreeable RAW TASTE in the Indian Corn, which simple baking will not entirely take away; and the wheat flour being mixed with this pudding after it has been taken from the fire and cooked, and the whole well kneaded together, may be made to rise, and be formed into loaves, and baked into bread, with the same facility that bread is made of wheat flour alone, or of any mixtures of different kinds of meal.
When the Indian meal is previously prepared by boiling, in the manner here described, a most excellent, and very palatable kind of bread, not inferior to wheaten bread, may be made of equal parts of this meal and of common wheat flour.
But the most simple, and I believe the best, and most economical way of employing Indian Corn as Food, is to make it into puddings.--There is, as I have already observed, a certain rawness in the taste of it, which nothing
In the northern parts of North America, the common household bread throughout the country is composed of one part of Indian meal and one part of rye meal; and I much doubt whether a more wholesome, or more nourishing kind of bread can be made.
Rice is universally allowed to be very nourishing,--much more so even than wheat; but there is a circumstance well known to all those who are acquainted with the details of feeding the negro slaves in the southern states of North America, and in the West Indies, that would seem to prove, in a very decisive and satisfactory manner, that INDIAN CORN IS EVEN MORE NOURISHING THAN RICE.--In those countries, where rice and Indian Corn are both produced in the greatest abundance, the negroes have frequently had their option between these two kinds of Food; and have invariably preferred the latter.--The reasons they give for this preference they express in strong, though not in very delicate terms.--They say that "Rice turns to water in their bellies, and runs off;"--but "Indian Corn stays with them, and makes strong to work."
This account of the preference which negroes give to Indian Corn for Food, and of their reasons for this preference, was communicated to me by two gentlemen of most respectable character, well known in England, and now resident in London, who were formerly planters; one in Georgia, and the other in Jamaica.
The nutritive quantity which Indian Corn possessed, in a most eminent degree, when employed for fattening hogs and poultry, and for giving strength to working oxen, has long been universally known and acknowledged in every part of North America; and nobody in that country thinks of employing any other grain for those purposes.
All these facts prove to a demonstration that India Corn possesses very extraordinary nutritive powers; and it is well known that there is no species of grain that can be had so cheap, or in so great abundance;--it is therefore well worthy the attention of those who are engaged in providing cheap and wholesome Food for the Poor,--or in taking measures for warding off the evils which commonly attend a general scarcity of provisions, to consider in time, how this useful article of Food may be procured in large quantities, and how the introduction of it into common use can be most easily be effected.
In regard to the manner of using Indian Corn, there are a vast variety of different ways in which it may be prepared, or cooked, in order to its being used as Food.--One simple and obvious way of using it, is to mix it with wheat, rye, or barley meal, in making bread; but when it is used for making bread, and particularly when it is mixed with wheat flour, it will greatly improve the quality of the bread if the Indian meal, (the coarser part of the bran being first separated from it by sifting,) be previously mixed with water, and boiled for a considerable length of time,--two or three hours for instance, over a slow fire, before the other meal or flour is added to it.--This boiling, which, if the proper quantity of water is employed, will bring the mass to the consistency of a thin pudding, will effectually remove a certain disagreeable RAW TASTE in the Indian Corn, which simple baking will not entirely take away; and the wheat flour being mixed with this pudding after it has been taken from the fire and cooked, and the whole well kneaded together, may be made to rise, and be formed into loaves, and baked into bread, with the same facility that bread is made of wheat flour alone, or of any mixtures of different kinds of meal.
When the Indian meal is previously prepared by boiling, in the manner here described, a most excellent, and very palatable kind of bread, not inferior to wheaten bread, may be made of equal parts of this meal and of common wheat flour.
But the most simple, and I believe the best, and most economical way of employing Indian Corn as Food, is to make it into puddings.--There is, as I have already observed, a certain rawness in the taste of it, which nothing