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Hopping John
1 lb. breakfast bacon 1 pint (2 cups) red or 1 pint (2 cups) rice Salt and pepper to taste Water cow peas Wash the peas and soak them in water overnight; when ready to place on the fire pour over them a quart of water and boil until half done; then add the bacon after washing it. Should the water boil away, add a little warm water. Wash the rice, add water, and allow to boil for twenty
The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the final step has to be inferred from standard practice: the rice goes in with the peas and their liquor and steams until dry and separate. A few older terms need translating first.
- Cow peasCowpeas are field peas — black-eyed peas, crowders, or the small red ones the recipe calls for first. Dried black-eyed peas are the easiest substitute and behave the same way.
- Breakfast baconThe phrase in this period generally refers to cured side meat rather than the thin factory strips of today, and the instruction to wash it points to a salt-cured piece; a piece of slab bacon or salt pork, kept whole and cut up at the end, is the closest match. The recipe calls for a full pound.
- MeasuresThe recipe supplies its own equivalence: a pint of peas is 2 cups, and a pint of raw rice likewise. That is a lot of rice for the quantity of peas — the dish is meant to be starchy and filling, but a scant cup and a half gives a better balance.
- The soak, and whether you need itAn overnight soak was standard for peas of unknown age. With current dried black-eyed peas, an hour is plenty, or none at all if you extend the simmer.
- Half doneFor the peas that means tender-skinned but still firm in the centre, roughly 20-25 minutes at a bare simmer. Add the bacon at that point so it flavours the liquid for the rest of the cooking.
- Salt timingSalt only after the peas are soft. The bacon contributes a good deal of it, so taste the pea liquor before adding any.
- Finishing the riceThe text breaks off at "twenty", so the timing has to be inferred; twenty minutes is about right for the rice, which wants to absorb the pea liquid rather than swim in it. Keep about two cups of liquid to a cup and a half of rice, cover, and leave it alone on very low heat; stirring turns the dish to paste.
- YieldAs written it feeds six to eight as a main dish, more as a side. It reheats well with a splash of water.
Hoppin' John is the Lowcountry rice-and-field-pea dish of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, built on the two crops that defined the region's plantation agriculture: Carolina Gold rice and the African cowpea, both cultivated and cooked largely by enslaved West Africans, and both with clear parallels in West African rice-and-bean cookery. The name's origin is genuinely unknown; the folk explanations involving a hopping waiter or a peddler called John are traditional stories rather than documented ones. Printed recipes appear from the 1840s onward, and the association with New Year's Day — peas for luck — is a familiar one, though the attendant customs, such as coins in the pot, are thinly documented and appear largely later.