448 Of Food, 



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 sift- 

 ing) be previousl)'' 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 cooled, 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 but long boiling can remove ; but when 

 that disagreeable taste is removed it becomes extremely 

 palatable, and that it is remarkably wholesome has 

 been proved by so much experience that no doubts 

 can possibly be entertained of that fact. 



