<<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