Johnnycake#Hoecake

Image:Kenyon Corn Meal Company.jpg in Usquepaug, Rhode Island.

The building shown was built in 1886, and company history dates from the early 1700s or earlier.{{Cite news |last=Meehan |first=Mary Beth |date=August 2, 2006 |title=Jonnycakes from the Kenyon Corn Meal Company |url=http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/rhodeisland/galleries/johnny_cakes/ |access-date=November 6, 2008 |publisher=Boston Globe}}]]

{{Redirect|jannock|the wheat flatbread|Bannock (disambiguation){{!}}Bannock}}

The earliest attestation of the term "johnny cake" is from 1739 (in South Carolina); the spelling "journey cake" is attested only from 1775 on the Gulf Coast, but may be the earlier form.{{Cite encyclopedia |year=1989 |title=Johnny-cake |encyclopedia=Oxford English Dictionary}}{{OEtymD|johnny-cake|accessdate=May 31, 2012}}

The word is likely based on the word Jonakin, recorded in New England in 1765, itself derived from the word jannock, recorded in Northern England in the sixteenth century.{{Cite book |last=Hess |first=Karen |author-link=Karen Hess |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_yIJBQDY0H0C&pg=PA125 |title=The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-1-57003-208-0 |page=125}} According to Edward Ellis Morris, the term was the name given "... by the Americans to a cake made of Indian corn (maize)."{{Cite book |last=Morris |first=Edward Ellis |author-link=Edward Ellis Morris |url=https://archive.org/details/australenglisha02morrgoog |title=Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases, and Usages, with Those Aboriginal-Australian and Maori Words which Have Become Incorporated in the Language and the Commoner Scientific Words that Have Had Their Origin in Australasia |publisher=Macmillan |year=1898 |page=[https://archive.org/details/australenglisha02morrgoog/page/n253 223]}}

Another suggested derivation is that it comes from Shawnee cake, although some writers disagree.{{Cite book |last=Randolph |first=Mary |author-link=Mary Randolph |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oszKiYe2RyAC&pg=PA277 |title=The Virginia House-wife |publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press |year=1824 |isbn=978-0-87249-423-7 |page=277}}{{Cite book |last1=Stavely |first1=Keith W. F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xGzF54OaJE4C |title=America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking |last2=Fitzgerald |first2=Kathleen |publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8078-2894-6 |page=34}}

The term hoecake is first attested in 1745, and the term is used by American writers such as Joel Barlow and Washington Irving.{{Cite encyclopedia |year=1989 |title=Hoecake |encyclopedia=Oxford English Dictionary}} The origin of the name is the method of preparation: they were cooked on a type of iron pan called a hoe. There is conflicting evidence regarding the common belief that they were cooked on the blades of gardening hoes.{{Cite web |title=How the Hoe Cake (Most Likely) Got Its Name |url=http://historiclondontown.org/files/Hoe-Cake-Etymology-web.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120905183850/http://www.historiclondontown.org/files/Hoe-Cake-Etymology-web.pdf |archive-date=September 5, 2012 |access-date=July 28, 2013 |publisher=Historic London Town and Gardens}}{{Cite book |last=Bartlett |first=John Russell |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryameri04bartgoog |title=Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States |publisher=Little Brown |year=1860 |edition=3rd |page=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryameri04bartgoog/page/n235 197] |access-date=March 15, 2010}}

A hoecake can be made either out of cornbread batter or leftover biscuit dough. A cornbread hoecake is thicker than a cornbread pancake.{{Cite book |last=Starr |first=Kathy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fqjeq1p417IC&q=Hoecake+biscuit&pg=PA141 |title=The Soul of Southern Cooking |date=1989 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=9780878054152 |page=141 |access-date=June 12, 2016}}

Indigenous peoples of the Americas using ground corn for cooking are credited with teaching Europeans how to make the food.{{Cite book |last=Keane |first=Augustus Henry |author-link=Augustus Henry Keane |url=https://archive.org/details/worldspeoplesap01keangoog |title=The world's peoples: a popular account of their bodily & mental characters, beliefs, traditions, political and social institutions |publisher=G. P. Putnam's sons |year=1908 |page=[https://archive.org/details/worldspeoplesap01keangoog/page/n272 256] |access-date=March 16, 2010}} It is also claimed that johnnycakes were made by the Narragansett people as far back as the 1600s.{{Cite news |last=Lukas |first=Paul |date=November 13, 2002 |title=The Big Flavors Of Little Rhode Island |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/dining/the-big-flavors-of-little-rhode-island.html |access-date=July 23, 2018 |work=The New York Times |language=en}}

From this culture came one of the main staples of the Southern diet: corn (maize).{{Cite book |last=Dragonwagon, Crescent |title=The Cornbread Gospels |publisher=Workman Publishing |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7611-1916-6}} Corn was used to make all kinds of dishes from the familiar cornbread and grits to liquors such as whiskey and moonshine, which were important trade items. Cornbread was popular during the American Civil War because it was very cheap and could be made in many different sizes and forms. It could be fashioned into high-rising, fluffy loaves or simply fried for a fast meal.

To a far greater degree than anyone realizes, several of the most important food dishes that the Southeastern Indians live on today is the "soul food" eaten by both black and white Southerners. Hominy, for example, is still eaten ... Sofkee live on as grits ... cornbread [is] used by Southern cooks ... Indian fritters ... variously known as "hoe cake", ... or "Johnny cake."... Indian boiled cornbread is present in Southern cuisine as "corn meal dumplings", ... and as "hush puppies", ... Southerners cook their beans and field peas by boiling them, as did the Indians ... like the Indians they cure their meat and smoke it over hickory coals.{{Cite book |last=Hudson |first=Charles |title=The Southeastern Indians |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |year=1976 |isbn=0-87049-248-9 |pages=498–499 |chapter=A Conquered People}}

Image:Jonnycakes 01.jpg

Johnnycakes are an unleavened cornbread made of cornmeal, salt, and water. Early cooks set thick corn dough on a wooden board or barrel stave, which they leaned on a piece of wood or a rock in front of an open fire to bake.Paraphrased: Johnny cake boards made for this purpose, were about ten inches wide, fifteen inches long, and rounded at the top. After one side baked brown, the turned the johnny-cake over to treat the other side the same way. If no suitable board was handy, the cook might take the metal blade of a hoe, and clean it and grease it with bear's oil. The dough baked on this metal surface was called a hoe-cake. {{Cite book |last=Vogel |first=William Frederick |url=https://archive.org/details/homelifeinearlyi00voge |title=Home Life in Early Indiana |year=1954 |page=[https://archive.org/details/homelifeinearlyi00voge/page/18/mode/2up?q=johnny+cake 18]}}

In the American south during the 18th century versions were made with rice or hominy flour and perhaps cassava.{{Cite book |last1=Weir |first1=Robert M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_yIJBQDY0H0C&pg=PA125 |title=The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection |last2=Hess |first2=Karen |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |year=1998 |isbn=9781570032080 |page=127 |access-date=May 12, 2012}} A 1905 cookbook includes a recipe for "Alabama Johnny Cake" made with rice and 'meal'.{{Cite book |last=Wilcox |first=Estelle Woods |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FUCucBKftisC&q=%E2%80%9CAlabama+Johnny+Cake%E2%80%9D&pg=PA31 |title=The Original Buckeye Cook Book and Practical Housekeeping |publisher=Reilly & Britton Company |year=1905 |isbn=9781557095152 |page=31}}

The difference between johnnycake and hoecake originally lay in the method of preparation, though today both are often cooked on a griddle or in a skillet. Some recipes call for baking johnnycakes in an oven,{{Cite book |last1=Dojny |first1=Brooke |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nw_m49ZJ-l0C&pg=PA211 |title=Dishing Up Maine: 165 Recipes That Capture Authentic Down East Flavors |last2=Scott Dorrance |publisher=Storey Publishing |year=2006 |isbn=9781580178419 |page=211 |access-date=March 15, 2010}} similar to corn pones, which are still baked in the oven as they were traditionally.{{Cite book |last=Hundley |title=Social Relations in Our Southern States |pages=87–88 |quote=Corn-dodger, corn-pone, and hoe-cake are different only in the baking. The meal is prepared for each precisely in the same way. Take as much meal as you want, some salt, and enough pure water to knead the mass. Mix it well, let it stand for fifteen or twenty minutes, not longer, as this will be long enough to saturate perfectly every particle of meal; bake on the griddle for hoe-cake, and in the skillet or oven for dodger or pone. The griddle or oven must be made hot enough to bake, but not to burn, but with a quick heat. The lid must be heated also before putting it on the skillet or oven, and that heat must be kept up with coals of fire placed on it, as there must be around and under the oven. The griddle must be well supplied with live coals under it. The hoe-cake must be put on thin, not more than or quite as thick as your forefinger; when brown, it must be turned and both sides baked to a rich brown color. There must be no burning—baking is the idea. Yet the baking must be done with a quick lively heat, the quicker the better.}}

Johnnycakes may also be made using leavening, with or without other ingredients more commonly associated with American pancakes, such as eggs or solid fats like butter. Like pancakes, they are often served with maple syrup, honey, or other sweet toppings.

According to the manuscript of America Eats, a Works Progress Administration (WPA) guide to American food culture in the beginning decades of the twentieth century, Rhode Island "jonny cakes" were made in the 1930s as follows:

In preparation, [white corn] meal may or may not be scalded with hot water or hot milk in accordance to preference. After mixing meal with water or milk it is dropped on a smoking hot spider [pan] set atop a stove into cakes about 3"x3"x1/2"{{efn|{{convert|3|by|3|by|1/2|in}}}} in size. The secret of cooking jonny cakes is to watch them closely and keep them supplied with enough sausage or bacon fat so they will become crisp, and not burn. Cook slowly for half an hour, turn occasionally, and when done serve with plenty of butter.{{Cite book |last=Kurlansky |first=Mark |title=The food of a younger land: a portrait of American food; Before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional: from the lost WPA files |date=2009 |publisher=Riverhead Books |isbn=9781594488658 |location=New York}}

In Australia the bread usually known as damper, made with wheat flour rather than cornmeal and cooked as smaller, individually-sized portions, is sometimes called "johnny cake".{{Cite book |title=The Macquarie Dictionary |date=1981 |publisher=Macquarie Library |isbn=0949757004 |location=St. Leonards, N.S.W. |page=954}}{{Cite web |last=Santich |first=Barbara |title=Bold Palates, Australia's Gastronomic Heritage |url=https://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/boldpalates.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210304210730/http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/boldpalates.htm |archive-date=March 4, 2021 |access-date=February 13, 2021 |website=www.southaustralianhistory.com.au}}{{Cite web |last=Eley |first=Talisa |date=August 23, 2017 |title=Food for thought at NAIDOC Week 2017 |url=https://thesourcenews.com/2017/08/23/food-for-thought-at-naidoc-week-2017/ |access-date=February 13, 2021 |website=The Source News |publisher=Griffith University School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Journalism Media Centre}} It is uncertain if this name was influenced by the term for North American cornmeal bread. Australian johnny cakes are baked in the hot ashes of a fire or fried in fat in a frying pan (skillet).

File:Johnnycake, West Indies 01.jpg]]

In the Bahamas, "johnny cake" refers to a bread made with flour, sugar, butter, and water. After being kneaded, the bread is baked until lightly browned, and has a soft and malleable middle. This bread is usually eaten with soup or on its own.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}} The common bread consumed in the Bahamas in 1725 was made of corn and flour. According to Mark Catesby, an English naturalist who visited North America and the Caribbean in the early 1700s, "Their bread is made of Maiz, or Indian Corn, and also of Wheat; the first they cultivate but not sufficient for their consumption. Wheat is imported to them in Flower from the Northern Colonies."{{Cite book |last=Catesby |first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hVVNvPMBGEkC&pg=PA165 |title=Catesby's Birds of Colonial America |publisher=UNC Press Books |year=1999 |isbn=9780807848166 |editor-last=Feduccia |editor-first=Alan |page=165 |authorlink=Mark Catesby}}

The Boney M music disco group sang about Johnny Cakes in their song, "Brown Girl in the Ring", eating fried fish and Johnny Cakes on Saturday night.

Image:Yaniqueques 2012.jpg

File:Johnny cakes in basket.jpg johnny cakes]]

Yaniqueques or yanikeke are a Dominican Republic version of the johnnycake, supposedly brought over in the nineteenth century by English-speaking migrants (possibly of Afro-Caribbean descent). These cakes are made with flour, baking powder, butter and water; they are typically deep-fried.{{Cite book |last=Benady |first=Ilana |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YY-9XZ92RhIC |title=Aunt Clara's Dominican Cookbook |publisher=Lulu |year=2005 |isbn=9781411663251 |pages=12, 25 |access-date=March 16, 2010}} They are a popular beach snack, especially in Boca Chica.{{Cite book |last=Cambeira |first=Alan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S0brxSC3bBUC&pg=PA226 |title=Quisqueya la bella: the Dominican Republic in historical and cultural perspective |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |year=1997 |isbn=9781563249365 |page=226 |access-date=March 16, 2010}}{{Cite book |last=Pariser |first=Harry S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nan3oIDq42wC&pg=PA236 |title=Adventure Guide to the Dominican Republic |publisher=Hunter Pub. |year=1994 |isbn=9781556506291 |page=236 |access-date=March 16, 2010}}

Johnnycakes refer to flat discs of deep-fried wheat bread dough in Curaçao, other Dutch overseas territories and areas with significant Dutch Antillean communities. They are usually leavened with baking powder or soda and generally do not contain cornmeal. They are usually eaten filled with a slice of Gouda cheese or salted cod.

Fried johnnycakes, also called fried dumplings, are a traditional staple across the island.{{Cite book |last=Donaldson |first=Enid |title=The Real Taste of Jamaica |isbn=9781895629644 |publisher=Warwick Publishing |year=1996}} They are made of flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, margarine or butter, and water or milk. The kneaded dough is fried in oil.

Within the Belize Settlement, the British imported flour, with rations given to the enslaved. In the early Belize Settlement, "Johnny Cakes," also known as "Journey Cakes," were prepared over a firehart and eaten by the enslaved woodcutters. Belizean Journey Cakes are a small baked bread, leavened with baking power and scored on top with the kiss of a fork during proofing, to prevent "puffing" of the bread. Merchant Baymen of the Bay of Honduras (Belize), were linked to the New England Colonies.

The modern johnnycake is a staple in the traditional cuisine of New England, where it is believed to have originated in Rhode Island. A modern jonnycake is fried gruel made from yellow or white cornmeal that is mixed with salt and hot water or milk, and sometimes sweetened. In the Southern United States, the same food is referred to as a hoecake.

The eighth episode of season six of the HBO crime drama The Sopranos is named Johnny Cakes, after the modern dish found mainly in New England.

{{portal|Food|North America}}

• {{annotated link|American cuisine}}
• {{annotated link|Arepa}}
• {{annotated link|Bannock (Indigenous American food)}}
• {{annotated link|Cornbread}}
• {{annotated link|Corn cookie}}
• {{annotated link|Corn fritters}}
• {{annotated link|Frybread}}
• {{annotated link|Hushpuppy}}
• {{annotated link|Johnnycake Town}}
• {{annotated link|List of maize dishes}}
• {{annotated link|Spoonbread}}
• Yaniqueques- Dominican Republic version of johnnycake

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist|2}}

{{Commons category|Johnnycakes}}

• Beaulieu, Linda, The Providence and Rhode Island Cookbook, Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 2006, {{ISBN|0762731370}}.
• Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, fourth edition. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. (1889
• Hundley, Daniel R., Esq. Social Relations in Our Southern States. New York: Henry B. Price (1860).
• Vogel, William Frederick. "Home Life in Early Indiana". Indiana Magazine of History 10:2 (June 1914) 1-29. Indiana: Indiana University.

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