"Southwest: Dinner on the Katy"

Source: This Week Magazine, February 27, 1949, pp. 48-49

Miss P (Paddleford) hopped on the Katy Railroad at Dallas, Texas, but she wrote that she got on at Denison, Texas. Leave it to Miss P to tweak things just a bit. Yes, she occasionally tweaked things to her liking.

Paddleford wrote, "A handsome train, streamlined, its red and silver engine sleek and powerful. It hurled itself into the station and with a long leap sprang out again, out of the city and into the dark."

Miss P went to the dining car for dinner. First shrimp cocktail. She stated the shrimp hanging over the glass looked like "pink commas." Next Miss P was served onion soup. Her entree was a Kansas City steak, potatoes au gratin, and green beans.

During the meal, the kornette boy came through her dining car. "He wore a huge stainless-steel warmer like a breastplate held by a strap fastened 'round the neck," Miss P jotted in her notebook. When he offered her a kornette, she could not resist.

Recipe
1 quart boiling sweet milk
1 pound white corn meal
1/2 cup butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Slowly pour the boiling milk over corn meal. Stir well to make a thick batter. Stir in butter, sugar, and salt. Let stand five minutes. Fill into a pastry bag and drop to greased baking sheet in small cakes about the size of a silver dollar; chill five hours. Bake in a hot over (375 degrees F.) about 20 minutes. Yield: 6 portions.


Six portions, you say? Well, actually this should make more than 6 silver dollar size kornettes. Miss P stated, "Here's something that should be eaten in sets of a dozen."

Read more about Paddleford's trip on the Katy Railroad in Hometown Appetites.


www.clementinepaddleford.com
www.lib.k-state.edu/depts/spec/findaids/pc1988-19.html