Dixie Corn Dodgers and No-Flour Camp Corn Bread

donna

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Forum Host
Joined
May 12, 2010
Location
Now Florida but always a Kentuckian
Coarse, gritty and full of corn flavor, Dixie Corn Dodgers are bone fide camp fare. Whether cooked over a campfire or over an electric burner of a stove, they are good. solid sustenance.

Dixie Corn Dodgers

2 cups cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons melted butter or bacon drippings
2/3 cups milk

Combine the dry ingredients. Stir in liquids. Form eight "bullet-shaped dodgers. Drop in a greased and heated heavy skillet. Brown on one side, then turn to brown the bottom.

Many a soldier would love these.

From: "Confederate Camp Cooking", Patricia B. Mitchell. page 19.
 
No-Flour Camp Corn Bread

1 1/2 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon sugar, molasses, sorghum, or honey
2 cups buttermilk or sour milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon butter, melted or other fat

Mix the dry ingredients. Stir in liquids. Spoon into a well-greased hot 10 or 12 inch skillet. Cover, and cook over a low flame for about 30 minutes or until the cornbread is firm in the center (or bake in oven at 425 degrees for approximately 30 minutes).

From: "Confederate Camp Cooking", pages 20-21.
 
Now, just reading that caused and endorphin response. Thus, I think the probability is good that when I make that recipe that even greater endorphin responses will ensue upon eating the resulting corn bread.
 
Another favorite was Johnnycakes. A recipe from "Hasty Pudding, Johnnycakes, And Other Good Stuff, Cooking in Colonial America", by Loretta Frances Ichord, page 35.

Johnnycakes

1 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Heat water and butter in saucepan until they boil.

Put cornmeal, salt, and sugar in mixing bowl while water and butter are boiling.

Pour boiling water and butter into mixing bowl. Add milk and stir with wooden spoon until butter is mixed.

Heat a pat of butter in the skillet over medium heat.

Drop six spoonfuls of batter into the skillet. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until bubbles form on the surface of the cakes. Flip the cakes over and cook on other side.

Remove cakes and place on platters.

Continue cooking rest of cakes until all batter gone.

Serve immediately with maple syrup, sorghum, honey or apple butter.
 
Another name for a Johnnycake was a Hoecake. They were both pancakes made of either white or yellow cornmeal. They were originally cooked on a hoe or a flat board over an outdoor fire by Native Americans and early farmers. Corncakes were often packed for a long trip or carried out in the field when working.

These cakes were very important to Confederate soldiers as many times kept them alive. An example is this report from a young Confederate soldier, Johnny Wickersham who had been left and found by a "negro" woman who took him to her cabin and nursed him.

"After weeks of her motherly nursing I felt much better, and one day told her I was going to walk to Missouri. "No, honey, don't try it. You sure will die if you do," was her advice. However, with a big hoe cake, the only provision which she had made for me, I started on that long, weary tramp over a country that had been ravished by both armies, and in which not a building or so much as a fence, or head of stock remained."

From: Charles Minor Blackford III. ed., "Letters from Lee's Army", Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1948, page 252.
 
I´m given to understand that the ¨johnny¨ in ¨johnny cake¨ started out as ¨journey.¨ It was a long lasting sturdy bread that you can take on a trip.
Not period, but a great fictional reference anyway: In Charles Portis´ True Grit Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn had a mess of corn dodgers made up for their trip into the Indian Territory. Mattie wouldn´t eat them after the cabin fight because some of them had blood on them and she couldn´t tell in the dark.
 
Back
Top