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St. Nicholas' Pone
1 quart of meal. 1 quart of milk. 4 eggs. 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 2 teaspoonfuls cream of tartar. 1 teaspoonful of soda.--Mrs. C.C.
A list of proportions with no pan, oven or time given, in the manner of a cook writing for other cooks who already knew what a pone was. The quantities are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- "Meal" means cornmealIn a Virginia book of this period, unqualified meal is white cornmeal, stone-ground and fairly fine. A quart is about 4 cups, roughly 18-20 oz depending on grind.
- Liquid measureA quart of milk is 4 cups. Whole milk or buttermilk both suit; the original assumes sweet milk, since soda is being activated by cream of tartar rather than by acid in the dairy.
- The leavening is homemade baking powderTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one of soda is the standard nineteenth-century substitute for about 3-4 teaspoons of baking powder. It is single-acting: mix it in last, and get the batter into a hot pan and oven at once, before the gas is spent.
- This is a batter bread, not a hoecakeEqual volumes of meal and milk plus four eggs gives a wet, pourable batter rather than a stiff dough, closer to a soft baked batter bread than to a dense hand-shaped pone. Do not try to pat it into cakes.
- Pan and ovenNone is given, so this is reconstruction: a well-greased 9x13 pan or a large heated cast-iron skillet, into a moderate oven, around 375F, for 40 to 50 minutes, until set in the centre and browned at the edges.
- Scalding the mealIf the batter looks gritty, pour a cup of the milk over the meal boiling hot, let it stand ten minutes, then cool before adding eggs and leavening.
- YieldA full quart of meal makes a large pan, ten to twelve servings. Halve it for a household of four. Best eaten hot with butter; it goes dry within a day.
Pone comes into English from the Algonquian languages of the Virginia tidewater — recorded by early colonists in forms such as appone or poan, meaning something baked — and it stayed in the Southern vocabulary long after the corn breads it named had been enriched with eggs, milk and butter well beyond anything the word originally described. This version, with its quart of milk and four eggs, belongs to the prosperous end of that spectrum: a soft batter bread for a table with a dairy behind it, not the plain meal-and-water cake baked on a griddle. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877) credited its many contributors, often by initials only, which is why the dish is signed just "Mrs. C.C." The saint's name is likelier a family or seasonal association than any documented tradition — the book offers no explanation.