Yellow Bread 307 



fresh buttermilk. The flagons, the work of some seventeenth- 

 century English silversmith, had come out to the Carolinas in 

 the high-decked galley that brought the first of the Porchers. 

 After the Civil War they made the journey with Madam 

 Porcher and her husband in a covered wagon to the Texas 

 country. That was when the Apaches were stealing cattle and 

 scalping women. Madam had brought along, too, her own book 

 of recipes, and her standards of how South Carolinians, even 

 in exile, should live and breakfast. 



Boiled hominy used to be sold in the streets of our eastern 

 cities as polenta which is no more than corn-meal mush is 

 sold in Italy. The hominy-makers' cry, 



Hominy-man is on his way 

 To sell his good hominy. 



was set to a chant which rose deliciously at the end of the 

 second line. Dutch Molly's voice was hoarse from Swedish 

 beer and sleeping out on foggy nights. But Clio, the young 

 quadroon daughter of a runaway slave, who sold hot hominy 

 in the streets of New York, captured the imagination and 

 the musical ear of Stephen Foster. He tried to get her, and 

 her song, down in verses and chords. "There's a wild, wooing 

 tone in her voice that I cannot catch," he lamented. So Clio, 

 the hominy-seller, joins the girls over the bonnet-shop who 

 used to peek through the windows at young John Keats, and 

 who eluded all his efforts to imprison them in a sonnet. 



If you are one of the squeamish breakfasters who start the 

 day on lemon juice, hot water and a raw carrot grated, then 

 try hominy at lunch or dinner. Try hominy fritters made this 

 way: 



Beat the yolks of two eggs, and beat these into two cups of 

 cold boiled hominy. Add half a cup of flour sifted with two 

 teaspoons of baking powder and one teaspoon of salt. Add 

 three quarters of a cup of milk. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg 



