<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
Don and listmates:
 
My dainty little ole suthun eyes had a hard time imagining that recipe could
be called Southern Corn Pone.
 
When I was in grade school back when a young girl just had to know how to
curtsey properly, my class was asked by a slick- paged local magazine to
write an article about corn pone, so we all went home and batted our
eyelashes at the appropriate family historians and got all the old family
recipes.  Now if my memory serves me correctly, corn pone is supposed to be
made in little patties before they are fried, and I also don't remember any
beans in any of our recipes.
 
The main feature of the article we wrote, though, was a tattered and brown
old letter one of my classmates had which was a thank-you note written to
her granddaddy from Mr. Samuel Clemens otherwise known as Mark Twain.  In
the letter, Mr. Clemens thanked the gentleman and his lovely wife very
kindly for their recent hospitality, and sent warm thanks to the cook, and
he was wondering if he could have her recipe for corn pone as he was in
serious need of repairing his roof.
 
Sounds authentic, doesn't it?
 
But now for what I'd call a half-way authentic recipe from Mrs. Curtis's
Cookbook, a book printed in Petersburg, NY in 1908:  (By the way, the only
real authentic recipes for this are part of oral tradition and would nevah
be divulged!)
 
Southern Corn Pone
 
Sift a quart of white corn meal, add a teaspoonful of salt.  Pour on enough
cold water to make a mixture which will squeeze easily through the fingers.
Work it to a soft dough.  Mold it into oblong cakes an inch thick at the
ends and a little thicker in the center.  Slap them down on the pan and
press them a little.  These cakes they say must show the marks of the
fingers.  The pan must be hot and sprinkled with the bran sifted from the
meal.  Bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.
 
(Ours were always fried in bacon grease to ensure an adequate dose of
cholesterol!)
 
Now, if you Yankees and feriners on the list would like another taste from
the glory days of the South, I might try reworking a very local secret from
Tennessee called, Corn Light Bread.  It is steamed, white, sweet, and has a
texture you've never experienced anywhere else!  Its leftovers are sliced
and fried in bacon grease, and the sugars in it caramelize in a most
mouth-watering, artery-damaging fashion.  Since it is made with buttermilk
and some flour, I'll have to work on the recipe a little before I can make
it g/f c/f.
 
The South will rise again!  (At least our biscuits will.)
 
Susan Owens
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            (Walter & Susan Owens)
                            [log in to unmask]
                            Dallas, Texas  USA