Summer supper: corn, fried squash, carrot salad, cucumbers, tomato, and cornbread.
Dinner—The meal eaten at mid-day.
Supper—The evening meal.
—Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food Recipes & Stories from Mountain Kitchens written by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley
Jim and I added a section of food related vocabulary words to our cookbook to explain the terms used throughout the book and to help keep the usages alive for future generations.
People are often confused by my use of the words supper and dinner in my videos. When I was growing up we had breakfast, dinner, and supper. If we were at school we called dinner lunch and when I worked a public job I called the midday meal lunch, but it was always dinner at home and still is today.
Supper was always just supper. I was a grown woman before I realized some folks called the evening meal dinner instead of supper.
Regional differences in language fascinate me.
Here’s the entry for dinner from the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.
dinner noun The midday meal, traditionally the main one of the day.
1924 Spring Lydia Whaley 1 Pap let the county build a school house free on his land which was nigh enuf for ’em to go home to dinner. And he was “powerful to send us to school.” 1940 Oakley Roamin’/Restin‘ 128 Its dinner in the mountains at 12 noon and supper at night. 1959 Pearsall Little Smoky 91 “Let’s get us some dinner” may be said any time from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. 1972 Cooper NC Mt Folklore 159 I want to go back where they eat three meals a day-breakfast, dinner and supper, where the word lunch will never be heard again. 1996 Houk Foods & Recipes 7 Before noon, women headed home to fix “dinner,” the main meal of the day, consisting of hot cornbread, beans, pork in some form, and possibly a dessert. Duly fortified, they went back out to the cornfield for the afternoon. What appeared on the table for supper often closely resembled what was left over from dinner.
Change is inevitable in all areas of life including language.
I noticed two examples of change in the dictionary entry. Today most folks aren’t working in the cornfields all day and for many folks the largest meal of the day is supper instead of dinner.
Even though I can’t stop the changes, I aim to continue the tradition of using dinner for the mid-day meal and supper for the evening meal.
You can find mine and Jim’s cookbook here.
Last night’s video: A Pitiful Winter Squash Crop & Matt Threw His Glasses in a Dumpster (when he was young).
Tipper
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Having the largest meal at midday is probably the healthiest way to eat.
Very similar here in the U.K with older generations the post WW2 eating Breakfast, Dinner at around 12pm and will remember especially School Dinners and then Tea at around 5 or 6 pm, Supper when dad got home around at around 6. to 8.30 pm.
Now few eat a ‘proper’ breakfast, most people have lunch around midday , tea seems to have died out in most places with dinner or sometimes supper at around 6pm or 7.30 pm or later. Oddly, Sunday and Christmas Dinner is often served between 1.00 and 2 .30 pm . But many people just ‘graze’ and eat when they want .
Tipper, the picture you shared of summer supper looks delicious!! Would you mind sharing the recipe for the carrot salad? It looks wonderful!! 🙂
Regina-thank you! You can see the recipe here: https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/carrot-salad/ 🙂
At last! Someone who knows the difference between dinner and supper! Our family always had dinner at home as the largest meal of the day. For supper we’d have beans on toast or some leftovers from dinner. It wasn’t the largest meal of the day and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gone back to that eating style. If supper is too big, I don’t sleep well. It just makes sense to have the largest meal midday.
Growing up in New England my grandparents always used the term dinner for the midday meal but it was lunch at school. Maybe it was more prevalent along the east coast itself? I miss hearing them say that.
I remember back in the days when many men still worked at home breakfast and the week day dinners would be big amounts of country food that would stick with them, supper would often be nothing more than cornbread and milk. To this day if there is good southern (unsweet) cornbread on the table, I am going to eat and finish up my meal some cornbread and milk. I will skip desert to eat this. Men that did manual labor like the old time men did had to eat big meals for breakfast and dinner that would stick with them and would eat a “light” supper. Many of the ones in today’s generations have never done any hard manual labor.
I have read some comments about glasses, I was told when in the eight grade I needed glasses after my eyes were checked in high school. I wouldn’t tell my parents because I knew they didn’t have the money to buy a pair for me. I got my first glasses when I was 15, I couldn’t pass the vision test to get my driver’s license. I couldn’t see at a distance but had perfect close up vision. Two years ago I had cataract surgery and now my vision is the opposite.
Breakfast, dinner and supper were the meals served in my family home. Supper was always a lighter meal with us too. In fact, once, when asked why she hadn’t fixed supper one Sunday night, my mother’s reply was, “Pa’s not hungry.” Pa had not been consulted in the matter.
At school, it was ‘lunch’ and I never knew why. But I always had a lunch permit that allowed me to go home for dinner. In high school, I left the premises for ‘lunch’ but went to a burger or hot dog joint most days.
Mid day meal i have always called dinner and evening meal supper except when speaking with the “culturally deprived” people from the city.
Growing up supper was the evening meal, lunch was the midday meal, dinner was the big sit down meal as in Sunday at grandma’s, Christmas or Thanksgiving etc.. Regarding Matt tossing his glasses as a boy, I have to confess I was diagnosed as nearsighted at 11 and needed glasses, but was mercilessly teased as 4 eyes to the point I hated the glasses and one day on my way home from school I put them in the middle of the road and waited til a car drove over them. I marched home not thinking and boy did I catch it when my mother found out.
My mom grew up in the city. she called it lunch and dinner
my dad was a rural boy and called it dinner and supper. When we were in school mom would make breakfast. Oatmeal etc. We bought lunch at school. We would have a snack right home from school (my mom was a wonderful baker so we might have a cinnamon roll or a cream puff). My dad worked the night shift so he was fed and gone before we got home. We had
In the summer you were on your own as dad worked days to 12:00 construction and mom was in the garden until dinner. We played outside usually barefoot. if you got hungry you could make a pb&j or fry a hamburger. Mom would always have pre made patties in the freezer. We were called in for dinner and then we went back out until dark.
Growing up my mom always used supper for the evening meal and I’m pretty sure dinner was noon. School is where that lunch thing crept in. I suspect it’s because schools are always trying to “better “ the students. Lunch is just a short word for luncheon which, in the right circles is lovely…it’s just not the vernacular of the working people. I got into the habit of saying dinner for the last meal because that is what my husband and his family says but I have realized lately I’m saying supper again. I think it’s your influence Tipper since I’ve started watching your videos I’m unconsciously pronouncing words the way I heard them as a child growing up.
I read your blog all the time but I don’t usually comment because I’m eating my breakfast but I had to add my 2 cents this morning, lol.
It was and still is breakfast, dinner and supper for us here at home. I had never heard of lunch until I started first grade in 1964. If you invite me to your house for dinner, I’ll be there around noon:)
Same here, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper . I do say Lunch different places I’m at cause that’s what they say. Your meal look fresh a d delicious.
we ( Texans) always had dinner, then supper
My grandparents from South Carolina always used breakfast, dinner and supper. Dinner, the midday meal was always the largest meal of the day. I still use those terms.
I grew up hearing lunch and supper. We had dinner in the middle of the day on Sunday. I didn’t start saying dinner for supper until after I was married. Your supper sure looks good.
Traditionally, huge breakfasts were had in my family–eggs, bacon, sausages, and gravy, biscuits and toast, grits, and sometimes fried taters. Dinners, the same, meaning a lot of foods like chicken and dumplings, soup beans and cornbread, cucumber, tomato and onion salad, cabbage and bacon or cabbage, bacon, and noodles or cabbage, ham, and potatoes, seasonal fruits and vegetables, meat and fruit pies and variations of Shepherd’s Pie and also potato salads. Iced tea or coffee. For supper we also had leftovers, but mostly a lot of bread. Biscuits, cornbread, loaf bread with butter, jams and jellies, molasses, sometimes cinnamon and sugar or peanut butter and jelly. We usually had meat or cheese spreads that were good on breads as well and also gravy. I think the goal was to feed us full, cheaply, and to have no homemade breads wasted. There was always a bowl of fruits on the table as well. We all loved supper because it was the end of the day with everyone mostly done working except for meal cleanup, which like your family, everyone helped clear. Supper was casual and slow as everyone worked and everyone was tired. Normally, within an hour or two following supper, we were all in bed and sound asleep.
Daddy carried a black metal dinner bucket to his job in the coal mines that held his noon meal. His dinner was usually food leftover from the previous day’s supper. When I started school, I heard the word lunch or lunchroom and had no idea what that was. I don’t recall parents fixing lunch for the kids when they were not in school. We always had plenty of fruit and leftover biscuits smeared with honey or apple butter to nibble on throughout the day if breakfast didn’t hold us over till supper.
Growing up in East Texas & then later in South Texas, our family always called the meals breakfast, dinner & supper. Eighty years later & more “city-fied”, I sometimes find myself saying breakfast, lunch & dinner but that just doesn’t sound right to me. I like to say, “I don’t care what they call it, just be sure & call me when it’s ready”.
What has changed is not the word most commonly applied to the meal we eat in the evening, but the time of day we sit down for our main meal. Supp, from the German word for soup, accurately reflects the sort of light fare, along with leftovers, that were eaten by the rural farm laborers who had to arise early the next morn. With wage labor and the rise of urban influence on life and language “dinner”, the main meal of the day, migrated to the evening when we finally had time to prepare the fancy memorable meal of the day. I love learning about foodways, and the southern ways and food traditions of Appalacia are complex and fascinating. When I attended LSU in the 1970s historical geographer Sam Hilliard had just published Hog Meat and Hoecakes. It was one of the first scholarly books on the role food played in a region’s history, culture, and particularly its politics. These days Helen Zoe Viet and Gary Paul Nahban are my favorite scholars on the history of foodways and eating in America. Viet wrote a particularly pertinent book about food history in the South. http://www.helenveit.com/food-in-the-civil-war-the-south.html
Nahban’s latest book, Against the American Grain, is in many ways about respecting and preserving the cultural particulars of places. Another words, he has a lot in common with Tipper and her work, though their places and approaches may differ on the surface. https://www.garynabhan.com/books/
Yea we always called it dinner and supper ,, when my 2 daughter got older they started using lunch and dinner( supper) , I tell them the good Lord didn’t eat the last dinner , he had supper ! So there you have it. Case closed
I remember, as a young child, always trying to correct my mama for calling our meals breakfast, dinner and supper. I was in school and the midday meal was always lunch. I also tried to change the way she said other words “incorrectly”. I am sure I was influenced by teachers who corrected our English all day. I am not blaming them—it was their job. I am just so thankful that my 82-year old mama still eats dinner and supper. She still warshes and rinches her dishes and clothes. I love her Appalachian language. It is very true to her—and endearing to me.
From Bush Australia. Now in middle to late 60s, I have heard a few meal names. From the bush. Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea (Supper).
During my Navy Service, “Scran” (old Royal Navy) covered all three. Citified, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. As an add, two Australian States legislated to call Peanut Butter, Peanut Paste, as Butter is a dairy product (I still call it paste). However, when I can, I get the “true blue” American Peanut Butter from our ALDI, as much of the Australian product has only 10% Australian peanuts.
We are trying to keep the tradition going dinner for midday meal and supper for the evening. But we still lapse back to having lunch at midday meal
When my girls were small and I’d have a busy day with no dinner to be fixed I’d make an early supper and kind of combine the two meals, and we called it “lupper”, a combo of lunch and supper. Dinner was and always has been the mid day meal for me and supper the evening, it thrills me to this day when my grown children text and say “what are y’all fixing for supper?”
I thought about this after writing my first comment, Grandmother along with some of the other country ladies back when I was a child in 50 and 60’s would ring a Dinner bell- not a Lunch bell to let their husbands that were working in the fields know dinner was ready. Many regular members have heard me say I tried to be with my Granddaddy as much as I could, when Grandmother would ring the bell, Kate the mule would stop no matter if it was in the middle of the row and would go no further until you took her loose from the plow, she knew it was time to stop and go to the house and rest, eat, and get water as well as you did. I now have this bell in my yard still mounted on the same heart cedar post it was mounted on back then.
Here in southern WV I grew up knowing dinner as the mid day meal and supper for the last meal of the day! Btw, your supper looked healthy and delicious! I had pinto beans, cucumbers, onions and tomatoes in oil, vinegar and sugar and fried corn meal fritters. It was delicious! Ain’t nothing like home style supper made by loving hands that make a home fire burn!!! God bless you all this day!!!
I am 70 years old and for all of life I have ate breakfast, dinner and supper although at work dinner would be called lunch. I have worked all three shifts and some of us would just say let’s go eat on the back shifts. I am country to the bone- nearest town of any size is 14 miles away, another thing that gets to me is the “newbies” moving in and calling the roads streets. I want to tell them the cities has streets, the country has roads.
Sanford, after retiring I will sometimes not eat when I first get up and wait until mid morning to eat a little bit of something. I laugh and say I have moved up a step in society and now eat brunch.
Dinner should be the main meal in the middle of the day, supper a lighter meal in the evening. The medical field tells us that like they’re the ones who made it up. Our people who came before us knew that they needed the fuel during the day when most active, not a couple of hours before bedtime. I never heard the word brunch till I was grown, never understood it. Isn’t the first meal of the day still breakfast no matter what time you eat it? If you eat brunch do you skip dinner or supper?
Yep it was Breakfast, Dinner and then Supper when I grew up in Southern Indiana and Middle Ohio. I never heard of Lunch until I went off to college.
Always dinner and supper at both of my grandma’s house and mine.
We did hoe corn and go to the house for dinner.
Growing up dinner and supper were both used for the last meal of the day. My grandparents always said supper and my mom used both terms interchangeably, but my husband and I actually made an intentional decision to say supper so to keep our ancestors language going. That would probably sound weird to alot of people but I suspect my kindred spirits here won’t find it weird! We still say lunch for the midday meal though.
Hello Tipper. I enjoyed your and Matt’s video last night. It was a little sad to hear of Matt’s hatred of school. I leaned toward your version of just getting through it. To me it was a prison that all kids had to live through; and though I never liked it, I did well.
The first time I heard your mention of “dinner ” and “supper “, I knew exactly what you meant. As a kid I grew up in Northern Wisconsin. My grandparents were from Minnesota, so there was no southern influence that I can recall. It wasn’t until I moved to a big city that I was made fun of for calling their lunch, dinner. They thought my meal terms were dumb. Ouch! So you see, Tipper, Appalachia isn’t so isolated after all.
Blessings to you and the family!
A lot of people around here still say dinner and supper. I do. For me, dinner is the midday meal and the Lord fed a supper the night before His crucifixion. However, some of the younger ones around, including my son-in-law, in an effort to sound proper , will sometimes in company refer to the evening meal as dinner. I sometimes listen to the local sheriff’s office on the scanner. Our SO is very small with only a handful of deputies, almost all below 35. It always makes me smile when going off duty to eat their evening meal they radio the dispatcher and state, “67, I’ll be 10-6 for supper” like clockwork. 67 is dispatch and 10-6 means “I’ll be busy, unless urgent”. I told my wife once that I bet our county is one of the few where this happens. LOL! I was a teenager in the late 70’s and early 80’s. In the summer times, I was busy doing field work with people that were in their 70’s (born in the early 1900’s). I heard some interesting terminology. One term I heard my grandpa say during those times that has stuck with me was the word fagged that means severely exhausted or tired (i.e. I’m all fagged out).
The part about the officers going 10-6 for supper made me smile. A wholesome piece of simple goodness in a dark world. Thanks for sharing!
We used to call a cigarette a faggot or a fag.
Are you from Britain? They’re the only ones who did that.
AND, then along comes brunch which we called a mid-morning snack.
i remember when i was a kid we had faggot ceremony at summer camp, involving the burning sticks of the campfire—idon’t remember the purpose—but the next year when i used the term at summer camp the counselor fell over. but the british use of fag for cigarettes doesmake sense considering the original meaning of the word faggot. (perhaps that’s also where “flaming” came in?)
I too grew up in New England, the north shore of Boston; it was lunch and supper; I live in southeastern Virginia now for 40 years, and it’s still supper, though my children call it dinner.