Jonny Cakes
It's a psychological irony
that people, lacking evidence to support unquestioning faith in gods or governments,
will waste their true-believer energies vowing allegiance to the darndest things.
Swift's Lilliputians went to war over the proper way to break an egg; Yankees and
Yorkers squabble about chowder; and lots of people take their Johnny cakes far too
seriously. The fabled Johnny cake is New England's Apple of Discord. The endless
debate over the very name and nature of this lowly peasant food is the perfect non-issue
to bring out the hair-splitting fanatic in the nicest of people. The matter is so
complex, it cannot be settled; only outlined.
What's in a name?
In Rhode Island, it is generally claimed the original Johnny cake name was "journey
cake" because people packed the snack for road food. Perversely, Rhode Islanders
don't call Johnny cakes journey cakes; they call them Jonny cakes (for added perverseness,
without the "h"). The American Heritage Cookbook suggests Johnny cakes
were once an Indian food called Shawnee cakes -- implying that the name, for some
dumb and unexplained reason, was changed to something that rhymed. The American Heritage
Dictionary, however, defines johnnycake (lower case, one word) with a dismissive
"Corncake (see)." Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder's
mother speculated that the things were nicknamed to mock Johnny Reb by Civil War
soldiers. (Wrong for sure by dint of anachronism.)
When is a Jonny cake not a Johnny cake?
The distinctions among the various recipes given for the Johnny/journey/Jonny
cake boil down to this: Some say it's a little fried corn-meal pancake; some say
it's a big fried corn-meal pancake; some say its a little (or big) baked cormeal
pancake; and some think Johnny cake is just another name for cornbread. Rhode Island,
ever the strident voice of purism, insists that a Jonny cake is thin and small and
made from white, never yellow, corn meal. (Excuse the irreverence, but both kinds
of corn meal taste the same.) When renowned children's author Ruth Sawyer adapted
the "runaway bakedgoods" folk motif (remember the Gingerbread Man?) for
her 1953 classic Journey Cake, Ho!, she assumed her stone-ground hero was skillet-size
and thick and round (so it could roll through the country).
The recipe?
If you subscribe to certain Rhode Island Jonny cake schools, you take some white
corn meal, a little sugar, a little salt, and some milk; beat them 'til your elbow
aches and dollop spoonfuls of the mixture on a hot griddle as you would pancake batter.
(Warning: Of the 986,000 citizens of the Ocean State, roughly 756,008 disagree with
that -- especially the sugar part.) Alternative recipes yield either thicker yellow-meal-batter
pancakes or typical cornbreads, some baked in frying pans or "spiders"
(frying pans with legs for open-fire cooking).
Lies about Johnny cake.
Feel free to defend any fact or position you want about Johnny cakes. Johnny cakes
are named for Pilgrim-father John Alden who was allergic to wheat flour. Colonial
children used to chant "Johnny cake, Johnny cake, baker's man." Johnny
cakes were originally New World matzoth, which the confused Puritans called "Chanukah
cakes" then mispronounced. Make something up. Someone with nothing better to
worry about is bound to believe you.
- Clif Garboden
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