A month or so ago Teresa from West Virginia sent me an old cornpone recipe that has been passed down in her family.
Here’s a bit of what she said and the recipe.
I know you are super busy but I wanted to share a recipe that I’ve come to realize is unique to just a county or 2 in WV but has been around for decades. It’s Cornpone, but, it’s not the Cornpone that southerners call Pone. Hope that makes sense.
My Mom made cornbread like you do. WV Cornpone is sweet though but tastes different than sweet cornbread. Mom made it for 50 + years and her Mother law made it for years before her. (I have a cottage based Bread Business and make all the usual….sourdough, yeast breads, etc and lots of cornpones and I feel so close to Mom while I am baking).
I would love if you would try it because I know you all love soups and beans and this goes great with it and quite frankly, most anything! Interestingly, we don’t make it in an iron skillet like we do cornbread, but instead, in loaf pans.
It is dense and not crumbly and the taste is amazing! It also freezes great! I would make them for Mom, slice them, freeze it and take out a piece each time she wanted! When siblings come from out of state, this is what they order! Well, and Brown Beans! And Fried Potatoes with Onions
And Cole Slaw!
Nana’s Cornpone
3 cups White Cornmeal
1 ½ cups all-purpose Flour
1 Cup White Sugar
3 Cups Boiling Water
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon Soda
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Cup Buttermilk
3 Large Eggs
Using a mixer, incorporate the Cornmeal, Flour and Sugar and then add the Boiling Water. Add Baking Powder, Soda, & Salt. And finally, add the buttermilk and eggs. Batter will be very thin.
Pour equal amounts in 2 greased loaf pans and Bake at 450 Degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce Temperature to 385 Degrees, cover loaves with Foil and bake 35 minutes. (ovens vary) Enjoy!
Over the weekend I finally found time to try the old recipe from Teresa’s family. I used plain cornmeal made from blue corn a friend grew because the only white I had on hand was self-rising.
We really enjoyed the cornpone! Like Teresa said it is different. More like a dense loaf bread than cornbread, but oh so good. We ate it with potato soup. I know it would be good with soup beans and fried taters too.
If you’ve ever had this bread please leave a comment and share.
Last night’s video: Making Progress on the Shed – All The Posts Are In!
Tipper
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I have a new YouTube channel calledLife with Nana
I have questions about how to succeed, we love your channel and watch every episode. If you ever have the time to, I’d love to correspond with you. I realize you’re probably get tons of these kinds of emails. And I know you’re very very busy.
I also want to ask about copy written material. I have another channel that I’m trying to start reading to my grandchildren who live very far away from me.
Anyway, if you would like to correspond sometime, you have my name and email
We love your channel, we almost feel like we know you guys(of course I know we don’t really) but that’s the way I want my channel to feel welcoming loving. We love every video!
Linda, you can email me at blindpigandtheacorn@gmail.com 🙂
Thank you, Tipper for sharing this recipe!!
I was born and raised in Oklahoma and now live in Corpus Christi, TX. Now that I am older I love to cook and try different recipes.
Gotta say, I love your family. While growing up, we would always go to Silver Dollar City for the summer vacation. Missouri is not the same as North Carolina, but because I grew up every summer with ‘hillbillies’ I can relate with y’all. Please, I hope I didn’t offend you.
Just know that my husband and I do enjoy watching y’all living in the holler. ❤️
Lisa, thank you! I’m so glad you enjoy what we do 🙂
I always heard the term cornpone, but thought it was cornbread. I watched Tipper’s video and knew I had to make this. My better half does not like dry cornbread, after I explained to him that’s how it is and NO Sugar. He usually will not eat it.
I made this yesterday to surprise him when he came home from out of town. He liked it to my surprise. Although he said it wasn’t sweet enough. Sorry about his luck on the sugar. I did find him going to get piece a few times. I would say he liked it.
The inside seemed too moist and had a tough crust on the bottom and sides. I baked for a while longer and that helped. Has anyone tried to make more smaller loaves? The frying sounds like a good option and will try that today.
I’m going to cut and freeze the second one.
Thanks for sharing this recipe.
I’m enjoying reading the comments and have replied to several. I shared the recipe with Tipper because it’s as Appalachian as you can get in my County in WV ( for decades) and one can go 2 counties away and most have never heard of it.
My Mother grew up in WV but had never had anything but Corn Bread (very basic recipe and no sugar) until she married in 1954 and learned all about it from my Dad and Grandmother. She loved and regularly made the corn bread she grew up on and also regularly made and loved the corn pone my Dad grew up on. Each very different and both so good!
Family and carrying on their traditions is so important to me and my Mother would have loved knowing that so many are learning about her corn pone recipe.
May I ask what county in WV you’re from? Or which two counties make cornpones this way? I’m also from WV so just wondering if it’s from my region or not 🙂
Sounds really good! So nice of Teresa to share her family recipe.
So sweet of Tipper to give it a try and share with everyone!
We will be trying this too. I love to find other’s recipes and try. Thanks for sharing
I’ve never seen this recipe but it sounds wonderful!!!!! Both of my grandmothers made corn pones entirely differently. One made single small pones that were nothing but corn meal and tap water mixed really thin and fried in bacon grease. The would be very lacy around the edges. I can’t make them the way she did but I can come really close. My other grandmother made one large thick pone cooked on a small flat cast iron skillet with a small amount of bacon grease or lard just to prevent it from sticking to the skillet. It was corn meal and water mixed thick and I was turned only one time. People eating at the table would just break off a piece from the large pone. It was dry, not crispy, and also not greasy, but so good to eat. This pone was especially tasty crumbled in vegetable soup or pot liquor from where greens or rutabagas had been cooked. It was also good crumbled in a glass of milk or buttermilk to eat as a bedtime snack. I have never been able to successfully cook this pone. My cousin can cook one—but mine is always a big fail so I haven’t tried to cook one in a very long time
Wanda,
I’ve often heard of that kind of Cornpone and I suspect it was and remains a common way to make it. It was only in the past year that I began researching and discovered that the Cornpone that I grew up on is very unique to just a couple of counties in West Virginia.
I’ve heard of Cornpone and probably as a child have had it, I just don’t honestly remember my mom making it. I’m sure my Aunt Betty did because she made her own breads and cornbreads all the time. The recipe sounds delicious and one I’ll have to try. Thanks for sharing it!
Wow! That seems like a LOT of sugar! I have never used anything but yellow cornmeal so wonder why wouldn’t that work just as well if one had no white?
Wanita-yellow would work too 🙂 Just like my blue cornmeal worked.
Wanita,
It’s possible that Yellow would work just fine. All I know is that my late Mother, my Grandmother and the other folks in my area only use White Cornmeal. Not an ounce of sugar ever went in my Mothers Cornbread but Cornpone does have Sugar.
Yellow would be better! I use yellow cornmeal exclusively to make my cornbread.
Ed,
You may be right! I just can’t do it though because my late loved ones only used white cornmeal and I love keeping traditions going.
I’ve never had this bread but it sure sounds delicious! Being from here in the south, like Teresa said it’s not our usual pone of cornbread. I don’t care for sweet cornbread, but since this seems more like loaf bread, I want to try it. Thank you, Tipper and Teresa, for sharing this recipe.
This sounds delicious! I so wish I had my Granny’s cornbread recipe as it was unlike any other I’ve ever had. It wasn’t dry, fluffy & cakelike. It was extremely thick and dense and was served at most every meal. She made it in her cast iron pan on top of the stove not baked in the oven. The only thing I can remember she used Avery’s Fine Corn Meal which sadly I can no longer find. Thanks for the recipe and the trip down memory lane.
I’ve never had cone pone like this. It sounds delicious.
Hmmm wonder how this would be with Bob’s Red Mill corn flour? Saw it the grocery awhile back and been thinking about a good way to try it. This version sure does sound different. But on a different subject, Teresa got me wondering about something. She wrote “southerners” and it got my attention. I grew up in southern KY and have no distinct childhood memory of there being a southern identity spoken of. Yet we knew we were not “northerners” because ‘north’ was the place Kentuckians went to get work. School taught me KY was a border state in the War Between the States. Back then, I might have had to think about 10 seconds before saying I was southern, but I think on the whole a goodly portion of Kentuckians would swiftly agree to being Southern Appalachian. So, is being Appalachian a stronger identity than North or South? And, if so, how consistent is it along the Appalachian chain? That’s a long side trail but I think at least some of the folks here at BP&A are intrigued by such puzzles.
I don’t believe the difference between Northern and Southern Appalachia is a geographical thing. The only real difference is whether or not there is sugar in the cornbread.
Ed, this one made me laugh .This is the truest statement made .
Give Bob’s Red Mill a try and let us know! You might be on to something!
I don’t recall any of my family ever making that recipe for cornpone. Mom made cornbread with boiling water once in a while, but I think she fried it and it wasn’t sweet. Teresa’s recipe sounds like it would be good with a glass of cold milk.
Shirl,
I know a lot of folks that fry their cornbread and some even fry cornpone after it’s baked. I’ve never tried it that way. My late Mother loved pouring Cold Milk over some broken pieces of Corn Bread. I was never a fan! ha
As long as my maternal grandmother could cook her cornbread was similar. She used meal that she shifted in a pie plate shaped shifter. She would shift so fast it looked like it was just hovering in mid air and not touching her hands. She added soda and baking powder too. Her cornbread was very thick and took a long time to cook. I always thought it strange my mom’s cornbread was like yours, thinner. Since my grandmother taught her to cook, but of course I never thought to ask why the difference.
Robert,
That’s interesting! Great memory and don’t we wish we would have answers to some of those old ways they did things?
oh my…that is VERY close to the way granny made it and taught me to make it back when i was just a kid..cept she wouldn’t make that much, she usually made just one loaf pan and pretty much halved the ingredients listed…but it doesn’t surprise me how close it was since she was a cook in the boarding houses of the old logging and coal camps back in the 20’s and 30’s in southern WV…i’ve made it a few times and now i been reminded i might make it again today being a dreary icky day here..
Becky,
I’m glad this reminded you of your Granny and of her cooking in the boarding houses of the coal camps. I hope your version of Cornpone turned out great!
It sounds like the sweet cornbread recipe my family uses except it has more cornmeal. I’m going to try this next time I make cornbread. My husband doesn’t like cornbread, but maybe he would like this one.
Tipper and Teresa- the recipe sounds very interesting. I’m going to give it a whirl! My question is for Teresa: in your cottage business, do you ever bake anything gluten free? If so, do you have a particular brand of flour you use…and what is brown beans? I started cooking when I was 12 years old. I made pinto beans (red beans-which have always looked more brown than red to me), fried potatoes, and cornbread.
Hi Nan,
It’s interesting you would ask about Gluten Free. I have explored it but haven’t been making it because I don’t have many requests. King Arthur Gluten Free Flour or Bob’s Red Mill, would be my choice though.
Brown Beans are Pinto Beans. I’m realizing that depending on what part of Appalachia one lives in, we have various names for them.
My family hails from southern southern WV and Southwest Virginia. It’s interesting that growing up in those mountains, my grandmothers and great-grandmother used the terms “brown beans” & “soup beans” to refer to what we also called October beans, or more simply “Octobers.” If for some unusual reason we didn’t have Octobers, pinto beans were served…as a poor but (in a pinch) acceptable substitute. For the uninitiated, dried Octobers cook much more quickly than dried pintos, and they cook up much “soupier” (that is, the soup ir broth is much thicker than with pintos). I was taught that if you didn’t grow your own Octobers beans, you could buy bagged “cranberry beans” in the grocery store. That’s what I still do. They can be hard to find, but here in the VA/NC area, Food Lion carries them. I have friends who transplanted to Florida from West Virginia many years ago & I still mail bags of cranberry beans to them. Give ’em a try!
That looks so good. I have heard the of corn pone but never really knew what it was. So interesting.
I will have to try this, we enjoy cornbread with different soups, but this one looks and sounds interesting, so sometime this week I’ll make it and see if it becomes our new favorite. Thank you for sharing this!
Wow! This cornpone recipe sounds great! My mom would refer to regular cornbread as ” making a pone of cornbread. ” I’ll have to try it out.
Isn’t putting sugar in cornbread a crime here in Southern Appalachia? A pinch or two is a misdemeanor but a whole cup is a full blown felony the way I understand it.
I am in agreement with Ed. Two things you don’t do in the South, put sugar in cornbread and talk about our mothers! Putting sugar in cornbread and calling Jiffy Mix “cornbread” in the South will get you locked up and charged with a crime! The mandatory sentence is at least 1 year of hard labor, such as using a sledgehammer to make small rocks out of big rocks! The guards also make you wear a sign that has a name on it that says I came from up North! Talking about our mothers will get you killed.
Please take this for the way I mean it to be, just teasing with our northern members. Y’all can write about me being a redneck and I will plead guilty.
Ed,
It would be a crime if it was Corn Bread. But it’s not. It’s Cornpone. 🙂
Never had this before but it does sound like it would be tasty.
The lady mentioned eating the corn pone with brown beans. Where do you get brown beans? We grew growing and eating brown beans here on Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario Canada but I can’t find them now. Some say they were Brown Dutch beans and others just say brown beans. They are not kidney beans, or pinto beans, or Romano beans that you can find in the grocery stores because I’ve looked and tested. That used to be my favourite soup when I was a kid. I was hoping you had an idea. thanks, h
Look out for “One Brown Bean” in the future.
Barbara,
They are Pinto Beans. We also call them Brown Beans.
daddy didn’t like nothing but cornmeal salt and water, mama would fry it on the stove, it’s raining here in Georgia I didn’t expect it today, I don’t guess I’ll be making no videos today, God bless you friends have a great day, tornadoes in Mississippi yesterday, God help and God bless
Don’t knock it till you try it. This sounds to much like cake to me. In both mine and my wife’s families, corn pone was just another name for cornbread always unsweetened.
I don’t know if it is ok to plug a company, but Tipper mentions blue cornmeal, I know of a grist mill company located at Edisto Beach, SC that grinds and makes regular white or yellow cornmeal, colored cornmeal along with grits and other things. It is named “The Marsh Hen” company. I met Gregg when he was a college student working at Michelin and the man, Jack Brock, that got him started in this business was a very good friend of mine. He will ship his meal to you. You can read his story of how he got started on the store’s website.