Maize pounded and boiled. (See also HOG AND HOMINY.)
1629. Their servants commonly feed upon Milke Homini, which is bruised Indian corne pounded, and boiled thicke, and milke for the sauce.—Captain John Smith, ‘Virginia.’ (N.E.D.)
1634. Their ordinary diet is Poane and Omine, both made of Corne.—‘Relat. Lord Baltimore’s Plantation’ (1865), p. 17. (N.E.D.)
The N.E.D. also gives citations 1672, 1683, 1699, &c.
a. 1683. Their diet is maize, or Indian corn, divers ways prepared; sometimes roasted in the ashes; sometimes beaten and boiled in water, which they call homine.—W. Penn, quoted in Watson’s ‘Historic Tales of New York,’ 1832, p. 49. (Italics in the original.)
1705. [The Indians] boil Fish as well as Flesh with their Homony.—Beverley, ‘Virginia,’ iii. 12.
1775. The good women are employed to prepare a dish of venison and homany. (Note.) Maize coarsly pounded, sifted and boiled in water.—B. Romans, ‘Florida,’ p. 92.
1775. Food such as hommany, mush, groats, parched flour, &c.—Id., p. 121.
1787. The negro is called up about day-break, and is seldom allowed time enough to swallow three mouthfuls of homminy, or hoe-cake, but is driven out immediately to the field to hard labour.—American Museum, i. 215/1 (March).
1796. There is a dish also which they make of Indian corn, very common in Virginia and Maryland, called “hominy.” It consists of pounded Indian corn and beans boiled together with milk till the whole mass becomes firm. This is eat, either hot or cold, with bacon, or with other meat.—Isaac Weld, ‘Travels through North America,’ p. 105 (Lond., 1799).
1808. Mr. Macon raises his own homminy, and grows his own cotton, by the sweat of his hundred slaves.—The Repertory, Nov. 25: from the N.Y. Evening Post.
1814. Their most common food is homony and dried buffaloe meat.—H. M. Brackenridge, ‘Journal,’ p. 249.
1816. [In Virginia] they never fail of having hominy, which is broken corn and beans mixed; coarse or fine ground; fried, baked, or boiled; and the dish is so popular in Virginia, that they have a river named Chickahominy; and also an insect called the hominy-beater.—Henry C. Knight (‘Arthur Singleton’), ‘Letters from the South and West,’ p. 71 (Boston, 1824).
1823. At breakfast I found five or six sorts of bread, hot and cold, with boiled rice and hominy, Indian corn husked and boiled.—W. Faux, ‘Memorable Days in America,’ p. 53 (Lond.).
1825. The corn bread and homony of an old Virginian.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 75.
1848. When milk was not plenty, the lack was supplied by the substantial dish of hommony, or pounded corn thoroughly boiled.—Monette, ‘History of the Mississippi Valley,’ ii. 8. (For a fuller citation see JOHNNY-CAKE.)
