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Jonnycake (also spelled "johnnycake," johnny cake, and "journey cake") is a baked cornmeal flatbread, and was a popular American pioneer staple food. The dough was set on a wooden board or barrel stave and placed at an angle in front of an open fire to bake.2 The dough, made of cornmeal, salt, and water, was seldom sweetened since sugar was expensive and in short supply in early colonial America and on the frontier.
Modern johnnycake is popularly identified with Rhode Island foods. A 1776 diary of Thomas Vernon mentions "Jonny cake" while dining in Glocester, Rhode Island, on page 43. A modern jonnycake is usually made of lightly sweetened, yellow or white cornmeal mixed with salt and hot water or milk. It is baked thin in a pan, dropped by spoonfuls onto a hot greased griddle or fried in butter, somewhat similar to fried polenta or thin wheat bread. It may also be made using leavening, with or without shortening and eggs. A version made in Australia is either baked as small cakes in hot ashes or fried. Jonnycakes are often served with maple syrup, honey or other sweet toppings, although this is considered wrong by many jonnycake purists.citation needed
Hoecakes are a variant of jonnycakes. They are cooked on a griddle (or traditionally the blade of a hoe).
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Popular culture
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- In the U.S. in the 1800s, the johnnycake was known to symbolize an inn or tavern, such as a barber's pole symbolizes a barbershop and a three-sphere symbol symbolizes a pawnbroker.3
- In the popular television series The Sopranos, while hiding in New Hampshire, mobster Vito Spatafore begins a relationship with a short-order cook who regularly serves him jonnycakes. Vito begins referring to his lover as "Johnny Cakes".
- In the Simpsons episode "Lisa The Iconoclast", the curator of the Springfield Historical Society mentions making "microwave Jonnycakes".
- The Newhart television series often mentions Jonnycakes. The fictitious and nameless Vermont town has a body of water named Jonnycake Pond.
- In American West Classic Shane, the mother cooks Jonnycakes for Shane.
- In the song "Brown Girl in the Ring" by Boney M - "I remember one Saturday night we had fried fish and jonnycakes."
- In the Daria episode "Aunt Nauseum" Jake Morgendorffer buys a Civil War cookbook and makes Johnny Cakes for the entire family. Repeatedly throughout the episode Johnny Cakes are mentioned.
- In the 1967 novel The Outsiders, the character Johnny Cade is often referred to as "Johnnycake" by the rest of the gang.
- Old rural New England saying "Pea soup and Jonnycake, makes a Frenchman's belly ache"
See also
References
- ^ Meehan, Mary Beth. "Jonnycakes from the Kenyon Corn Meal Company". Boston Globe. Retrieved on 2008-11-06.
- ^ Vogel, "Hoe Life in Early Indiana", p. 9: "This pan was also used for baking pancakes, sometimes called 'flap-jacks,' and bread, too, was frequently made on it. Johnny cake was baked on a board made for this purpose, about ten inches wide and fifteen inches long and rounding at the top. The thick corn dough was placed on the board which was set against a chunk of wood near the fire. After one side had been baked to a nice brown, the other side was treated the same way. The resulting cake was often delicious. If a johnny-cake board was not at hand, a hoe, without a handle, was cleaned and greased with bear's oil. The dough was baked on this metal surface and was called a hoe-cake."
- ^ "Johnnycake Ridge Road -- 3 different versions of its origin", PD Extra, August 31, 2007
Further reading
- Beaulieu, Linda, The Providence and Rhode Island Cookbook, Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2006, ISBN 0762731370.
- Vogel, William Frederick. "Home Life in Early Indiana". Indiana Magazine of History 10:2 (June 1914) 1-29. Indiana: University of Indiana.
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- This page was last modified on 2 January 2009, at 00:56.
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