Laughter is Good Medicine. So is Spoonbread - No. 76

Old remedies, memories, and how to cook for someone when they’re sick

Photos: Danielle Atkins.

A CONFESSION: I HAVE READ SCADS OF OLD COOKBOOKS from Fannie Farmer to the Joy of Cooking with their mentions of “Invalid Cooking,” but I never took any of it to heart until COVID.

So I want to pay some attention to it now because sickness has been on our minds a lot for the past two years. Even before penicillin and other lifesaving drugs, we cared for the sick at home and this way of cooking for and feeding people became a part of our food story.

The doctor is always in when you’re at home

Fannie Farmer wrote Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent in 1905 and included chapters on feeding the sick as well as infants and children. For example, she told you how to sterilize milk to make it safe for drinking before milk was pasteurized.

Farmer was well suited to write this book as head of the prestigious Boston Cooking School and herself once an invalid. She had been a victim of a paralytic stroke at the age of 16 and was bedridden for months.

Broths, gruels, tonics & teas

Chapter opener in Southern Cooking, by Mrs. S.R. Dull.

As far back as 1747, cookbook authors offered recipes for feeding the sick. In The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, British author Hannah Glasse suggests either water gruel, buttered water, or barley water for those feeling under the weather. She made gout cordials of coriander, fennel and rhubarb. And for a ‘’Pain in the Stomach’’ she recommended a tonic of blue currants and anise seeds or rosemary tea.

Malinda Russell, the first published cookbook author of color, shared in her Domestic Cook Book in 1866 remedies for toothaches, burns, how to cure corns, restore hair to its original color, and cure rheumatism. And her suggestions seemed even more everyday when placed alongside a simple recipe for ice cream.

But when New England author, poet, editor, and activist Sarah Josepha Hale wrote The Good Housekeeper, Or the Way to Live Well, and to be Well While We Live in 1839, she not so much shared tonics and herbal teas as she preached the merits of an organized kitchen and a nutritious diet to heal.

Nearly a century later, after World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, Henrietta Dull needed a job to support her family. Her husband had been sick with an extended illness in the home and died. She approached an editor of The Atlanta Journal to see if she could write about food and help the home cook navigate hard times - things she personally knew - through recipes. She stayed at the newspaper for 30 years.

In her 1928 book, Southern Cooking, Mrs. Dull assembles a special section of recipes to care for the sick and recommends poached eggs, toast, and broth as well as recipes like Egg Delicious (poaching eggs in a tea cup!), and Orange Albumen (mixing crushed ice with fresh orange juice and an egg white for sustenance.)

All the invalid food options in the 1931 Joy of Cooking to keep things interesting.

Anything but a milk toast job

While I was in high school I got a job running food trays on Sunday afternoons to the rooms at an elderly home in Nashville. I submitted the orders to the cook, covered the dishes, placed them on a tray and headed to the elevator to deliver.

Most of the orders were for milk toast. At the time I thought it was an odd thing to eat for supper, until I noticed the nuances of milk toast, whether the residents chose wheat, white, rye, or salt-rising. Or whether the toast was buttered or not. The milk stayed pretty much the same - warmed whole milk poured into a covered pitcher. And there was always a bowl on the tray because to savor milk toast you placed the toast in the bowl and poured the warm milk over to soften it so you could eat it with a spoon.

One day, out of sheer curiosity, I made myself an order of milk toast with buttered white bread. It was soft and soupy, comforting, and delicious.

Thinking back, I’m glad I was the special deliverer of it to people hungry for milk toast and a smile.

Invalid cooking, cornmeal, eggs, and butter

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate what Fannie Farmer and Mrs. Dull offered in the way of sickroom cookery. But no one makes me hungrier for invalid food than Irma Rombauer.

In her masterful Joy of Cooking (1931), she recommends the sick be fed rice puddings, light omelets, and soufflés. Yes! Her ‘’Corn-Meal Souffle’’ with creamed brains is such an example. I’ll skip the brains, but I’m all in for the cornmeal souffle.

We call it spoonbread.

It is a soufflé of the South, the most divine use of cornmeal I’ve ever seen, and always served with a spoon. The creaminess is irresistible whether you’re under the weather or not.

Years ago I studied spoonbread in great detail for a Cook's Illustrated magazine article. I perfected a recipe of my grandmother’s, and then I went off in different directions to see if the recipe would allow cheese, shaved corn, shredded zucchini, or chopped ham to be incorporated. (The answer is yes. About 1/2 cup.)

In the recipe that follows, white cornmeal is cooked in whole milk until thick. Egg yolks are added for richness, and then egg whites are beaten until nearly stiff peaks and folded in carefully. No other leavening is needed. If you see a spoonbread recipe with baking powder, just turn the page… (Baking powder might have been added to some spoonbread recipes around the turn of the 20th Century, but those beaten whites are the only leavening needed.)

You can bake this spoonbread in any 2-quart casserole, but the more spectacular presentation is a straight-sided 8-cup ceramic souffle dish. Once the spoonbread is in the oven it begins to rise, and by 40 to 45 minutes it hits its peak and has a glorious golden brown crown on top. That's when it's time to carefully pull it from the oven and take it straight to the table where everyone can spoon in and eat.

Or, place it on a tray and take it to someone who needs to feel better.

Chicken soup or milk toast? Do you have favorite recipes to feed someone under the weather?

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My Grandmother’s Spoonbread

Spoonbread is more like soufflé than cornbread. And don’t be surprised if it conjures up memories. My husband insists on eating it with strawberry preserves. He says it takes him back to his childhood, and that's how it was served to children back then. I prefer just butter.

Makes 6 servings

Prep: 15 minutes

Bake: 40 to 45 minutes

Soft butter for greasing the pan

3 cups whole milk

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup white cornmeal

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne

3 large eggs, separated

Pinch of salt

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish or 8-cup souffle dish with soft butter. Set aside.

2. Place the milk and salt in a large heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and when boiling, slowly add the cornmeal, stirring to keep the mixture smooth. Reduce the heat to low, and keep simmering and stirring the cornmeal until the mixture is very thick, about 5 minutes.

3. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the butter, sugar, nutmeg and cayenne until the butter melts. Separate the eggs, placing the yolks in a small dish and the whites in a large stainless steel or glass bowl. Add the pinch of salt to the whites and set aside. Blend a spoonful of the cornmeal mixture into the egg yolks and stir to temper (bring up their temperature) them. Add the egg yolks back to the pan of cornmeal, and stir until smooth. Set aside.

4. Beat the egg whites on high speed with an electric mixer until stiff but not dry, about 2 to 3 minutes. Fold the beaten whites into the cornmeal mixture until nearly smooth. Turn this into the prepared dish, and smooth the top. Place the pan in the oven.

5. Bake until the spoonbread has puffed up and is golden brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Serve at once.

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This Thursday for Subscribers:

A rice pudding reinvented, perfect for wintery January afternoons in front of the fire. And five things you should know about rice