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 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.
The culture of it required more labour than most other kinds of
grain; but, on the other hand, the produce is very abundant,
and it is always much cheaper than either wheat or rye.--
The price of it in the Carolinas, and in Georgia, has often been
as low as eighteen pence, and sometimes as one shilling sterling
per bushel;--but the Indian Corn which is grown in those southern
states is much inferior, both in weight and in its qualities, to
that which is the produce of colder climates.--Indian Corn of the
growth of Canada, and the New England states, which is generally
thought to be worth twenty per cent. more per bushel than that
which is grown in the southern states, may commonly be bought for
two and sixpence, or three shillings a bushel.
It is now three shillings and sixpence a bushel at Boston; but
the prices of provisions of all kinds have been much raised of
late in all parts of America, owing to the uncommonly high prices
which are paid for them in the European markets since the
commencement of the present war.
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