A slice of Guyanese cassava pone

Pone is a type of baked or fried bread in American cuisine, and the Cuisine of the Southern United States. Pone could be made with corn, or some other main ingredient could be used like sweet potato. This style of bread, eaten cold as a breakfast food, was a staple food of the cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies.[1]

Terminology

The term "pone" most likely entered English from Native American language terms like apan, oppone or supawn,[2] meaning baked, possibly related to earlier ash cakes baked in hot coals.[3] A "corn pone" is usually a small round loaf of cornbread, about the size of a biscuit, traditionally baked in a round cast iron skillet.[4]

The batter was also called "corn pone" and could be thin and fried on the griddle to make Johnny cakes or thicker to make baked loaves ("pone"), or dumplings, called corn dodgers when dropped in stews and hush puppies when deep fried.[4] Hush puppies were called "fried pones" in the 1928 edition of Southern Cooking by Henrietta Stanley Dull, later changed to "hush puppy" for the 1941 edition.[5]

Isabel Ely Lord uses the terms ash bread, johnny cake, spider cornbread and hoe cake as synonyms for corn pone. Her explanation of the history of these different terms follows:

As "ash bread" it was baked in the hot ashes of the fireplace, protected by a cabbage leaf, or leaves; as "hoe cake" it baked on a hoe in the fields, or on a hoe-shaped board (with long handle) in the fireplace. "Pone" is the irregular oval shape the cakes took in these last 2 methods when shaped by the palm of the hand. "Johnny cake" was a Northern name, and the cake was usually baked in the oven.

Variations

There are varieties on the basic corn pone recipe like apple pones, pumpkin pones and sweet potato pone. The batter can be enriched with sweeteners like sugar or molasses to improve the flavor, and spices like cinnamon, cloves, ginger or grated orange peel, but some cooks consider the addition of sugar a deviation from "the original dish". When milk is used in place of water it becomes corn cake.[6]

There are hundreds of variations of sweet potato pone in historical cookbooks with rose water, orange blossom water as a dessert, or served as a side dish for pork or wild game. Creole variations typically add black pepper.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Neal, Bill (15 October 2009). Bill Neal's Southern Cooking. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807889589.
  2. ↑ Jackson, Jeremy (25 March 2003). The Cornbread Book: A Love Story with Reciples. HarperCollins. p. 8. ISBN 9780060096793.
  3. ↑ "Hannah Mary's Corn Pone". Southern Cultures.
  4. 1 2 Sohn, Mark F. (28 October 2005). Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture and Recipes. University of Kentucky Press. p. 91. ISBN 9780813191539.
  5. ↑ Fowler, Damon (September 2009). Classical Southern Cooking. Gibbs-Smith. p. 329. ISBN 9781423613510.
  6. ↑ Everybody's Cook Book:A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery (1924) by Isabel Ely Lord
  7. ↑ McGreger, April (15 September 2014). Sweet Potatoes: A Savor the South® Cookbook. University of North Carolina Press. p. 52. ISBN 9781469617671.
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