Mush and Milk Parties

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 It had been a fun October evening of games and song at the Hollenbaugh home in Westminster, Maryland, a party in honor of Miss Mable Wright and Mr. Amadee Petry. At 11:00 p.m., the guests were invited into the dining room where mush and milk was served. There were prizes given for who could eat the most mush and milk, who had the heartiest laughter, and who was best singer.

  A steaming bowl of cornmeal mush served with milk was familiar to virtually any American in 1900, when the Hollenbaughs hosted their party. In 1881 in the Columbus (Kansas) Courier the editor wrote, “There is not a soul in the community who has arrived at the age of maturity but cannot remember that they were “put to bed” on a bowl of mush and milk.”

      Yet the Hollenbaugh party was unusual in that newspapers were already describing mush and milk socials as old-fashioned way back in the 1870s. They were a popular church fundraiser in the Midwest in the 1870s and 1880s, and more of a novelty elsewhere, or later.

     Leftover cornmeal mush, poured into a loaf pan and sliced the next morning, becomes fried cornmeal mush. It was a special treat in my childhood (served with syrup), something my dad would prepare, with his own fond memories of his mother fixing it for him. When I went to Indiana University, fried cornmeal mush was served in the dining hall and I always chose it on the days it was offered. It’s fast and easy to fix, cheap – and delicious. 

     In 1899, the Haworth family of Eldon, Kansas invited relatives to a mush and milk Thanksgiving dinner. “Who would be so base as to eat turkey when they can get mush and milk?” their invitation joked. A postscript added that this was in the interests of women’s emancipation, presumably from hours in the kitchen. A table was set with gallon crocks of steaming mush at either end. At each plate was a new tin cup, filled with milk. Sugar, cream and butter were arranged down the table, as were bowls of oatmeal and graham mush. The tin cup was part of the nostalgia.

     Afterwards, cake, nuts, popcorn and apples were passed around, to the disapproval of some of the older adults as it wasn’t in keeping with the purity of a mush and milk party. However, this was probably said in jest, and a lot of laughter was reported. 

     More typical were the mush and milk fundraising parties sponsored by many a Ladies’ Aid Society at  - most typically - the Methodist Church.  (Congregational, and Baptist Churches had mush and milk socials, too.) The price was typically ten cents a bowl, and often there was entertainment such as lecturers, or the Osage (“Colored”) Band in Osage, Kansas, or a visit from Santa Claus at an 1871 event.

Perhaps surprising for a dish described as so old-fashioned, "mush and milk" sets were given as wedding presents in the 1870s and 1880s.

     By 1913, nostalgia for the dish inspired an article in the Elwood, Indiana Call-Leader. “There are a scattering few people left in this county who can remember the days when the children in the average homes a third of a century ago knew what they were going to have for supper every night in the year,” the reporter wrote. “The diet consisted of cornmeal mush and a liberal supply of good morning’s milk…The youngsters watched the pot boil and eagerly gazed at their mother as she stirred the meal into the boiling water. They each had a tin cup and a spoon and watched impatiently the bubbling and sputtering mush…”

     I found two poems celebrating the dish, and a moralistic story from 1886 in which a poor but honest boy, the son of a widowed washerwoman, is bullied and called “Mushy” by other kids. A woman passerby scolds them and makes them see the value of the “mush and milk boy.”

     Here are a few stanzas from one of the poems:


Mush and Milk


Oh, the flavor, sweet and rare,

Of the simple farmer fare —

Mush and milk, the wholesome diet

Of the life so pure and quiet.


Give me now a table bright,

With its bowls so clean and bright,

Glittering spoons in hands so manful,

Milk so luscious in the panful. 


Oh, the rosy cheeks it gives!

Oh, the arms so strong and brave!

Mush and milk has raised the latest

Of the nations, and the greatest.


 Sources:

 

     “A Mush and Milk Social,” The Democratic Advocate (Westminster, Maryland), 20 Oct 1900, p. 3.

     “Haworth and Dewees Reunion,” The Galena Evening Times (Galena, Kansas), 7 Dec 1899, p. 2.

     “Cut the Cost of Living - Mothers of Thirty Years Ago Knew How To Do It,” The Call-Leader (Elwood, Indiana), 1 Dec 1913, p. 6.

     “Mush and Milk,” Indiana State Sentinel (Indianapolis), 7 Dec 1887, p. 6.

     “Mush and Milk Boys,” The Western Baptist (Topeka, Kansas), 11 Aug 1886, p. 2. 


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2022

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