1913 - Dishes and Beverages of the Old South

Plain Corn Bread

DDV CULINARY

(The Best.)

Sift sound fresh white cornmeal,
wet with cold water to a fairly soft dough,
shape it by tossing from hand to hand into small pones,
and lay them as made into a hot pan well sprinkled with dry meal.
The pan should be hot enough to brown the meal without burning it.
Make the pones about an inch thick, four inches long, and two and a half broad.
Bake quickly, taking care not to scorch, until there is a brown crust top and bottom.
For hoe-cakes make the dough a trifle softer,
lay it by handfuls upon a hot-meal-sprinkled griddle,
taking care the handfuls do not touch.
Flatten to half an inch, let brown underneath, then turn,
press down and brown the upper side.
Do not let yourself be seduced into adding salt--
the delight of plain corn-bread is its affinity for fresh butter.
It should be eaten drenched with butter of its own melting--
the butter laid in the heart of it after splitting pone or hoe-cake.

Salt destroys this fine affinity.
It however savors somewhat bread to be eaten butterless.
Therefore Mammy always said:
"Salt in corn-bread hit does taste so po' white-folks'y."
She had little patience with those neighbors of ours who
perforce had no butter to their bread.