The Search for a Vintage Cornbread

Eutycus said:

I don't wish to hijack this thread and I'll let us get back to the subject of cornbread. But I got a question, Speaking of old hoes, is there anything or anyway of revitalizing or preserving the hickory handles on farm implements?

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Soak it in antifreeze, let it dry and the soak in linseed. Of course antifreeze is all sorts of toxic. So maybe just linseed. I'd take the handles off first if possible to let wood swell, then rehaft.

Eutycus said:

I don't wish to hijack this thread and I'll let us get back to the subject of cornbread. But I got a question, Speaking of old hoes, is there anything or anyway of revitalizing or preserving the hickory handles on farm implements?

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I might mention that I have always used BLO yearly but that seems to open up a can of worms. Maybe tried and true.

BillinOregon said:

Bill: Mules and hit-and-miss engines. Does it get any better than this? I think not. Eutycus, I am now on the watch for an eye hoe for purposes of experimental archaeology. I just might find one at the monthly flea market in Buffalo Gap.
Waksupi, guessing if Painted Mountain makes good meal it ought to parch well, too, eh?

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I couldn't say, I never tried parching it. I know it isn't very good as a sweet corn, and suspect it wouldn't be too great for parching.

1950DAVE said:

I might mention that I have always used BLO yearly but that seems to open up a can of worms. Maybe tried and true.

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I'm still trying to figure out the difference between Tried and Trues "Polymerized" process verses "Boiling" I think part of the equation is the initial purity of the raw linseed oil. Tried and True might technically be a "Boiled" linseed oil but the initial stock is clean enough that much a much less toxic process is necessary. Just to keep tangenting farther off topic, I think Tried and True is the stuff to use for oil cloth because of the purity and hopefully a less acidic product that wont rot the fabric.

BillinOregon said:

Bill: Mules and hit-and-miss engines. Does it get any better than this? I think not. Eutycus, I am now on the watch for an eye hoe for purposes of experimental archaeology. I just might find one at the monthly flea market in Buffalo Gap.
Waksupi, guessing if Painted Mountain makes good meal it ought to parch well, too, eh?

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You might also shine up your site shovel and try it.

Sooty Scot said:

You might also shine up your site shovel and try it.

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Oh I had it shining like a new nickel some years back but hey I'm old and I'm not on the hoe squad.

Bark-eater said:

Soak it in antifreeze, let it dry and the soak in linseed. Of course antifreeze is all sorts of toxic. So maybe just linseed. I'd take the handles off first if possible to let wood swell, then rehaft.

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What exactly would be the purpose of antifreeze?

Eutycus said:

What exactly would be the purpose of antifreeze?

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Soaks in and leaves a waxy residue in the wood cells. Kind of a ghetto wood treatment that I remember being used when I was a carpenter. I think the approved brand name product is called PEG.

Wood treatment for displacing moisture used by woodturners - PEG-10 Polyethylene Glycol
Antifreeze-ethylene glycol

How long does one soak a hoe handle? Before some smart a** is going to say "Oh,about 4 or 5 feet", let me rephrase the question. For what length of time is the handle left in the antifreeze?

Getting back to the original cornbread question...
Are we talking about "first wave" longhunters, "second wave" pioneer settlers, or the folks afterward in communities with trading posts, early general stores, or what?
I suspect cornbread likely changed over time, as more supplies became available. I have a strong suspicion that the earliest stuff was either a- varying Native recipes picked up from friendly hunting/trading partners, or
b- the simplest and quickest to make, the same hoe cake made by field hands across the Southeast for 200+ years, whether those workers were enslaved captives or my grandmother and her sharecropping parents and siblings.
Good, quick, and loaded w/ sodium, etc., to make it through the afternoon.

Cvkotvkse said:

Getting back to the original cornbread question...
Are we talking about "first wave" longhunters, "second wave" pioneer settlers, or the folks afterward in communities with trading posts, early general stores, or what?
I suspect cornbread likely changed over time, as more supplies became available. I have a strong suspicion that the earliest stuff was either a- varying Native recipes picked up from friendly hunting/trading partners, or
b- the simplest and quickest to make, the same hoe cake made by field hands across the Southeast for 200+ years, whether those workers were enslaved captives or my grandmother and her sharecropping parents and siblings.
Good, quick, and loaded w/ sodium, etc., to make it through the afternoon.

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I just recalled. Dad said when he first started work he rode with several others to the Cotton Fields in an iron tired wagon pulled by one black horse and one white mule.
It cost a five cent piece. Dad should have been in Jr High.

What the heck is a "first wave longhunter" pray tell?

Especially given the parameters @Loyalist Dave has layer out for who he is talking about.

Dang you guys!! Lol. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and I started looking here to see what's up.
Next thing you know, I'm mixing cornbread etc into a much thicker batter than PD did.
I did try something different. I used the thinnest cooking device I own. A real totillarilla. Thinner than a shotgun barrel, designed to cook raw dough into tortillas.
They tasted fine, but the center cooked much faster than the edges, due to uneven heating.
I think if the batter had been thicker it may not had been as difficult.
But even the not browned parts tasted fine. Then I added some real Moo butter and ummm.
I finally mixed peanut butter and syrup... dad's favorite.
Not sure which Wave ate these, but they went to bed with full tummies.

Jay Templin said:

So the earliest references to white people making cornbread in North America are 17th century but omit anything like a recipe. It’s most likely that they were adding ground corn into a cheat bread recipe in the same way that when wheat flour was scarce they made horse bread by adding ground dried peas to stretch it. (“Horse” in this case meaning “coarse” or “large,” like in “horseradish.” The earliest descriptions of Indian cornbread are of a stiff dough of meal, fat, and hot water. Sometimes baked in the coals, and sometimes wrapped around dried fruit and nuts, rolled in corn husks and boiled like a tamale.
My favourite of the historic cornbread recipes is Mary Randolph’s:
“Rub a piece of butter the size of an egg into a pint of cornmeal, make a batter with two eggs and some new milk, add a spoonful of yeast, set it by the fire an hour to rise, butter little pans and bake it.”
Jay

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The Cherokees made a bean bead using hominy pounded in a mortar and mixed with cooked dry beans. Do a search on “Cherokee bean bread.” There are several u-tube videos showing how this can be done using grocery- store masa.
I have tried this method using canned pinto beans. The result is very similar to tamales.

Eterry said:

I finally mixed peanut butter and syrup... dad's favorite.

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Thank you so much.
I thought I was the only one who did this. Started in elementary school when they would serve waffles for lunch, not sure why I put peanut butter then maple syrup on my waffles at 1st,,, but I've been doing it ever since.

Interesting about the bean bread.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/cherokee-bean-bread

KITCHEN RESULTS

So I took four variations on the meal/flour....
Left to right, cornmeal, cornmeal and masa flour 50/50, all masa flour..., all 1/4 cup of dry followed by 3/4 cup of scalding water and a pinch of salt. The fourth was 1/4 cup of cornmeal and a pinch of salt with 3/4 cup of cold water.





The masa immediately formed a sort of batter. I let them all sit overnight, and today cooked them....



Corn, Corn & masa, all masa, and corn with cold water...12 hour wait....

All corn whether hot or cold worked fine, and the masa was the easiest to cook being the most like a traditional pancake batter. The all corn I poured the beginning of the cake into the hot pan with a little bit of grease..., then added some more in the center after the first portion stopped spreading, and the added corn/water spread out almost to the edge of the first dose.

All four, when given enough time flipped well. Just a little fat in the pan...

So the all corn tasted the best, being very "corn flavored", while the masa flour tasted as expected, like a rather thick corn tortilla. I'd add a bit more salt for sure, and adding some cayenne pepper as the nice lady from Mount Vernon suggested in the video would be a good idea.

So the difference between these and corn "pone" is that a pone would be done in a lot of grease, sort of deep fried.

I think this answers the question.

EXCEPT my next try will be to use ground parched corn, and water, and see if nookik, called by New Englanders "nocake", made into a round and cooked on a hot surface, might work. Perhaps the origin of "hoecake"

LD

Sunday Morning Pancakes.

1cup Masa, 1cup Apple Juice, egg, Maple Syrup, leavening.
clam shell Iron.

I'll weigh in a skosh on this:
As Dave and Notchy Bob have pointed out neither the corn nor the milling process was the same as we use now. The photograph shows a mill that is within driving distance of my house and of which I was once (abt 35 years ago) a member of the then Interpretive Society. This mill is restored and used for educational purposes only, but it was originally built in 1846, which is outside the general era of this discussion, but basically the only things that changed were the levels of technology.


I never had anything to do with the milling, so some of this may not be 100% correct as I am using my memory only, This is unintentional and please forgive me and post corrections if I am. In this posed photo we see the miller and some random kid he is instructing siting on the skirt of the mill stone.
The corn being used is what I have always called field corn so I guess that would be Dent Corn. They are picking the black bits you see in the corn pile out of it. These would be rocks, shucks, stems etc. and would decrease the quality of the meal and shorten the stones life. The top stone can be seen behind the lad held in it's lewis. Also note the cornmeal spread out from the seed pile, one can see how much coarser the product is when compared with the previous posted pictures. This is finished meal spread on the stone to lubricate it and to start the flow of milled meal to the edge of the stones where it will fall into a hopper which then allows it to run into a bag (if I remember correctly).

After the initial pile is cleaned, the water wheel will be engaged and the miller will start the mechanism that lifts the lewis and stone up and then lower it onto the spindle protruding from the bottom stone, the lewis is then removed and the drive shaft is connected to the spindle protruding from the top stone. The drive is then engaged and worked up to a grinding speed. The miller can also adjust the amount of the top stone that contacts the bottom. Still it is easy to see just how coarse the finished product is. So to approximate this kind of meal, look for coarse ground corn meal or, if it is just to rough for you, a medium.

The Interpretive Association used to sell up to 5 pound bags of the ground meals and flours to raise money to keep this functioning, then the Great Golden Demokratic Peoples Nanny State of Kalifornia decided you can't sell anything processed by or stored in porous materials (which is why we can't buy Platte Valley Corn Whiskey in the clay bottle here) and that ended. Used to sell them in 1 pound bags for awhile for "educational and decorative purposes" don't know if they still do. And yes, this kind of idiotic fecal mater are just a few reasons I am Mad Michael.