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Boone Tavern Hotel,
in Berea, Kentucky, has long been famous for its spoonbread. Richard Hougen,
Boone Tavern Hotel manager for many years, collected some of the best regions
best
recipes, including spoonbread. Most people
agree, that you cannot find a better recipe for spoonbread than the one used at Boone Tavern.
Spoonbread is the
richest, lightest, and most delicious of all corn meal breads.
The basic ingredients in spoonbread are very much the same from one recipe to
another, the major difference being that about half of the recipes call for baking powder and / or
sugar while the rest use neither.
Most old-time Southerners did not use sugar in
their spoonbread or any corn
bread recipes. Perish the thought! In Appalachian Mountains it was
unheard of to put sugar in corn bread. But sugar began to appear in more
modern variations of spoonbread --Yankee pressure and influence, perhaps!
In his book,
Southern Food, John Egerton stated that spoonbread probably originated in Virginia,
around 1824. Other authorities
maintain that spoonbread can be traced back to the Indian porridge called suppone or
suppawn, and therefore consider that to be the true ancestral source of spoonbread. Others say that
the butter, milk, and eggs, which made spoonbread such a special dish, probably
came after the Civil War. John R. Mariani, in The Dictionary of American
Food and Drink, says the term was not used in print until 1906.
Corn, was often
called the backbone of Appalachian cooking, is as important to Appalachia as
rice is to the Chinese. The best cornbread
is made from freshly water-ground meal. Corn meal has been used over the last
century to make a corn pone, crackling
bread, corn muffins, corn sticks, hoecakes, Johnny cakes, and spoonbread.
Spoonbread is one of the old recipes that's still popular today.
History of Spoonbread
provided by Sidney Saylor Farr, author of Spoonbread Cookbook. To
request a copy of the cook book call 859-986-9760.
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