Kentucky Corn Pone
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Scald the cornmeal with boiling water.
Mix in cold water and salt to form a thick batter.
Shape and bake
Mold the batter into flat pones, the size of your hand.
Place the pones in a baking pan and bake until brown.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the bulk of the pones, giving them their corn flavor and sturdy, grainy structure.
- Boiling water
- Scalds the cornmeal, softening its starch so the batter binds and holds its shape.
- Cold water
- Adds moisture to loosen the scalded cornmeal into a workable, thick batter.
The step that matters
Scald the cornmeal with boiling water. Boiling water swells and gelatinizes the cornmeal starch, which lets the batter bind. Adding it too little or too late leaves the pones crumbly and hard to shape.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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