GenChat-L Archives

From: ChasL45 <>
Subject: [GenChat-L] Authentic American Cuisine - Perhaps A Heritage of Slavery...
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 16:34:43 EDT

Fellow Chatters,

If you want to eat some awfully authentic American cuisine, enjoy some
hoecakes...

Websters Dictionary says that a hoecake is a thin bread made of cornmeal,
originally baked on a hoe at the fire...Webster's right...

Some folks say that hoecakes were often baked on hot stones banked around a
fire, and some claim that hoecakes taste best when laid in and cooked in the
hot ashes of a fire...Most folks today will prepare their hoecakes on a hot
griddle, but the flavor is the same...

It's commonly believed that slaves created hoecakes in the fields of the
South...If so, they're certainly owed a debt of thanks for this Southron
delight...

Hoecakes were a little higher than todays pancakes, flapjacks, or hotcakes,
owing in large part to the fact that a dough is used instead of a batter...As
great as they taste, hoecakes were, like cornbread, somewhat contributory to a
health problem that was all too common in the South for many years -
pellagra...Although wheat is an excellent source of niacin, corn almost
totally lacks it...A diet that is niacin-poor will lead to pellagra, which can
be fatal...Once that was discovered, cornbread and hoecakes lost something of
their dear place in the hearts of Southrons, and the bread companies - most
memorably Wonder Bread - jumped on the niacin bandwagon in their
advertising...Thats not to suggest that hoecakes or cornbread should be
avoided, but simply to remind you of why it is that Wonder Bread has niacin
and iron as prominent ingredients in their old advertising, and why it was
claimed that it helped make strong bodies in twelve ways...

Here's a recipe that's been modernized a bit, but it came from an 1855
cookbook...

Ingredients:
2 cups cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon melted fat (or vegetable oil)

Mix together the cornmeal, salt, and baking powder. Add the fat (or oil), and
stir in just enough water to make a soft dough - not a batter. It needs to
have a firmer consistency than batter. Once the dough has been prepared, drop
by spoonfuls onto a hot, greased griddle to make small cakes. When they begin
to turn brown, turn them over on the griddle to brown on the other side. When
both sides are brown, remove from the griddle. Serve them hot with molasses,
butter, jam, syrup, or preserves.

There is another, older recipe for hoecakes that is worthy of your
consideration, dating to no later than 1825...

Ingredients:
1/2 tablespoon lard
1 pint cornmeal
1 teaspoon soda
5 ounces boiling water

Sift one teaspoon of soda into a pint of meal and work in one-half tablespoon
of lard into the mixture. Add five ounces of boiling water and stir well.
Bake on a hot griddle until brown, and then turn it over to bake on the other
side until brown.

Make 'em however it suits you, or not at all...But don't knock 'em until
you've tried 'em...

Chas

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• [GenChat-L] Authentic American Cuisine - Perhaps A Heritage of Slavery... by ChasL45 <>