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Fatty Bread and Buttermilk

This entree never appeared on any bill-of-fare. It is hoped that nobody will make it, it might be thought too rich for good health. It is put in here merely in an historical sort of way, because it is strictly American and is not on record in any of the French books. To be still more precise, it is an institution of Blackville, and the people who believed in it had broad shiny faces and did not know a thing about dyspepsia. Although again it is hoped nobody will ever make anything so greasy anymore, it has to be recorded that the boys who did not belong in Blackville had a wonderful knack of coming home from squirrel shooting at sundown, just at the most favorable time for snatching a portion of this peculiar feast, to which the Blackville people did not welcome them, and always declared it tasted better than butternuts. There are many Blackvilles in the United States, and the one where this dish came nearest being named in French was on Bayou Black, not very far from New Orleans, but you could not translate the French spoken there, and, moreover, calabashes full of sugar cane juice from the mills took the place of buttermilk, and it was not quite the same thing. But there was a Blackville near that large hotel at White Sulphur Springs, and Blackville near Brownsville, on Blackwater river, at the Sweet Springs in Missouri. It was only in the flush times of hog killing that Blackville could indulge in this luxury; but if company was expected from the opposition village, whatever its name was, perhaps the young Blackvillans with their 'possum dogs would pass a whole night in the woods and fell any number of trees till they had 'possums enough. Because you can't make fatty bread without fat, and 'possum's fat does very well.

Somebody has to churn in the morning and take the buttermilk down to the spring house to become cool. The rest of it is very simple: 1 pound of corn meal. 1/2 pound of lard or 'possum fat. Salt. Pour the lard, melted, into the meal, and stir in enough cold water to make it like thin mush.

Spread in thin cakes on the hot stove lid, and when fried on one side turn them over. If you have no stove, but only a fireplace that takes in half a hickory tree trunk at a time, rake out some coals and bake the cakes in a spider.

To be eaten hot, with cold buttermilk.

In extreme contrast to the foregoing is the Whiteville variety of bread.