Blue Ridge Country May/June 2022 - 70

FLAVORS
Notes from the Land of
Spoonbread and Soup Beans
We follow a trail of our favorite tastes from eastern Kentucky.
By FRED & JILL SAUCEMAN
F
rom historic soft drinks
to filling station pizza
rolls, we have always
been fascinated by the
foodways of Kentucky.
Many of the traditional
dishes of the state's eastern
region mirror the meals we
grew up eating in Northeast Tennessee
and Southwest Virginia.
But crossing over the line into
the Bluegrass State also yields
some tasty surprises.
Eastern Kentucky is solidly inside the Soup Beans and
Cornbread Belt. A bowl of pinto beans simmering in a
minimalist broth of water and seasoned with pork, alongside
cornbread baked in a black-iron skillet, remains one
of the region's simplest and most treasured repasts. It's a
pennies-per-serving meal that reflects the hardscrabble existence
of mining families and subsistence farmers. And it
connects directly back to the ancient influence of Native
American practices on the cooking of this part of Appalachia,
using two of indigenous peoples' " three sisters, "
beans and corn-the other being squash.
A pot of soup beans can be prepared using no more
FRED SAUCEMAN
than four elements: the beans, water, some form of pork
such as lard or ham hocks, and perhaps some salt. In Eastern
Kentucky, as in neighboring states, the most common
topping is a handful of chopped, raw onions. Folks
favor chow-chow there, too. The vinegary relish is made
with the last of the garden's fresh vegetables in late summer
and early fall.
Its culinary genealogy may not be quite as lengthy as
cornbread's, but Kentuckians have been serving spoonbread
for a long, long time. Part of its modern-day popularity
can be attributed to the influence of the Boone
Tavern in Berea, where it's the beginning of every lunch
and dinner.
The late food historian, Kentucky native, and our good
friend John Egerton described his home state's spoonbread
as " a steaming hot, feather-light dish of cornmeal
mixed with butter, eggs, milk, and seasonings and lifted
70 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
LARRY SMITH
by the heat of the oven to a soufflé of airiness. " Another
writer claimed it to be " the apotheosis of cornbread. "
For over 25 years, Berea has celebrated spoonbread
through an annual festival. This year's event takes place
September 15-18.
Kentucky breads run the gamut, from the lightness
of spoonbread to the density of beaten biscuits. John
Egerton once owned a biscuit brake, a piece of equipment
engineered in the late 19th century to take some
of the manual labor out of the making of beaten biscuits
through the turning of a crank, as opposed to whacking
the dough with an ax handle or a baseball bat in order to
introduce air.
Whereas spoonbread is light, beaten biscuits are
dense-essentially cousins of hardtack. But beaten biscuits
remain an essential element of the Kentucky table,
encasing slices of the state's famous cured country ham.
They have been baked and served in one form or another
in Kentucky for at least two centuries.
Our Kentucky travels have also yielded such delights as
Pikeville's oddly named Smashburger, served at The Dairy
Cheer. Its name is derived from the welcoming sound of
turner against raw meat against metal griddle. We've even
come to know the cheese-sauced Smasharue.
Reader Mariah Smith guided us to some good gas station
dining in that same county.
" You can't eat in Pike County without grabbing a legendary
Italian pizza roll from any of the Double Kwik
markets, " she tells us. Mariah says the pizza rolls are made
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