What is cornpone anyway?

jdogric12 · Post by **jdogric12** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:16 am

Paul asked this in another thread. As a veteran of the Li'l Abner musical, I feel I should field this one.

From m-w.com:

Function: noun
Southern & Midland : corn bread often made without milk or eggs and baked or fried

Sounds like J Dog in the kitchen!

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:18 am

Not to be confused with coneporn!

lyle_from_minneapolis · Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:25 am

Or that nasty beverage, Pone Tang.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:26 am

Jdog, I also referred to "Jubilation T." in that post.

Being a Li'l Abner veteran, perhaps you can enlighten us on that account, too?

The film version of the comic strip featured what Catwoman in her first vamp role? What was her character called?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:31 am

Did someone say, "coneporn"?

bosco64 · Post by **bosco64** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:13 pm

That's easy; Julie Newmar was Stupefyin Jones. She was a gorgeous woman.

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:18 pm

Now THAT'S funny Paul!!!!

sloop_john_b · Post by **sloop_john_b** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:20 pm

So very lost right now.

elysrand · Post by **elysrand** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:57 pm

Warning - do not read if you do not want to read about a true slice of southern US life as I experienced it in my childhood. Hey, we are talking corn pone here in this thread, and there is just one corn pone....

Being from the South myself, I have made lots of corn pone. I have actually cooked hoecakes too, working in the fields on my great uncle's farm over in Washington Parish north of Bogalusa Louisiana, up above bayou country in the red clay creek bottomlands, during a couple of hot lazy summers back in the early 1960s. I was taught by a man who had been making them that way for 60 years or more himself for his lunch every day.

All you really need to make hoe cake corn pone is your water canteen and a handful of dry corn meal, premixed with a little salt and cayenne, that you had stuck in your pocket that morning at breakfast from the pone drycrock before setting out to work outside. First you find a good shade tree, and have yourself a seat on a log or a good clean rock. Build a little fire with some twigs and branches on a cleared area of dirt, with no pine needles anywhere. Reach into your pocket and take out a palmful of the corn meal, and dribble some water from your canteen into it until it takes on the consistency of a spongy ball, just starting to get slippery but not dribbling. Mash that ball onto a clean steel cooking surface that you have pre-heated in the fire I actually did use a hoe, which my great uncle had bought me for gardening and I had had polished off the blade on my pants leg for the purpose of cooking pone.

Stick the hoe blade, with its flattened ball of pone mix, into the small fire that you have built with twigs. Flame the end of the hoe, with the blade sitting flat, and the hand pointing straight up, but don;t let the flame curl around onto the cake, otherwise you made it too big and it will burn. The hoe cake cooks on the surface of the hoe. When it is yummy looking, you let the hoe cool and then eat the cake like a pancake. You may laugh at the imagined crudity of this method,l but there is nothing better than the fire-cooked taste of that cake, with the smoked edges and crispy surface. It cooks without oil, so it is kinda dry, but that's what the water canteen in for, to wash it down

Hoe cakes are the simplest form of corn pone, but any cornbread that you make in the form of a pancake shape is corn pone, as long as it has only corn meal, salt, and water as ingredients. As soon as you add any grease, oil, or other ingredients to the pone, it is no longer corn pone or hoe cake. It is now cornbread.

Well-made cornbread is a true Southern US delicacy if spiced and cooked correctly, and it can be dreadful if not cooked right.

jps · Post by **jps** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:32 pm

Al this talk of hoes and pone have made me...

elysrand · Post by **elysrand** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:37 pm

Wet, Jeff?

That's easy, just use less canteen water per handful!

bassduke49 · Post by **bassduke49** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:32 am

Great movie musical. Like the Jerry Lewis cameo where he gets "stupified" (as if it took much). Julie Newmar in that movie defined sex appeal for my youth; spectacular figure and legs to the sky. My, oh my!

jdogric12 · Post by **jdogric12** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:15 am

So, Elys, I take it you're familiar with the JB's song "Breakin' Bread," right? It's all about comin' home and makin' hoe cake bread.

Paul, was your question answered? I didn't quite follow what you meant with the "account" reference. But I did once work on music for a couple productions, including one directed by Peter Palmer, who lives nearby. Nice guy.

elysrand · Post by **elysrand** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 7:05 am

There are some really great Funk tunes out there, few that have good production values, though. Rarely, I will go spend money to buy one or two here and there. James Brown, I have to admit, was the only performer I have ever heard deliver left-field lines like "Let a man come in and do da popcorn" and have it fit and work amidst the rest of the tune

Between the "ugh" and the "uhn", and the "goodgod", of course. And the thing with the cape and that guy following him around picking it up over and over again....

Breakin' Bread was done by Fred Wesley and the New JBs back in the mid-seventies or so I think, as well as even later by George Clinton and the Horny Horns.

Fred started playing trombone at the age of 12 in a town on the Gulf Coast, and so did I! So, I like Fred's music even more because he was JB's 1960s musical director and he was a good trombone player too.

But my family's traditional hoe cakes predated JB and funk, that's for sure, by about a hundred and fifty years or so