View Single Post
  #14 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to alt.cooking-chat,rec.food.historic
Richard Wright Richard Wright is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 29
Default "Spotted Dick back on menu"

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 00:56:30 -0000, "New Poster" >
wrote:

>Cookie Cutter wrote:
>> New Poster wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Twinkies and Johnnycakes would get them rolling in the aisles
>>>
>>>

>>
>> Johnnycake is English. Colonists made Johnnycake back in England (If
>> don't recall the grain that was used) and in the American colonies, it
>> was made from corn because that was what was available.

>
>never heard of it here. If it did exist in this country I would think it has
>faded out as never seen or heard of it.
>http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_b...sages/660.html
>


Johnnycake is also an Australian term, but the recipe is different
from the American. The Macquarie Dictionary of Cookery distinguishes
thus: "JOHNNYCAKE. A small, flat damper of wheatmeal or white flour as
big as the palm of the hand. It is cooked on both sides, often on top
of the embers of a campfire or in a camp over. In America, a
johnnycake is made of cornmeal and water or milk."

I have also read of these Australian cakes called 'Jumping Johnnies'.
The mind boggles over what a ribald English mind would make of this
phrase. Perhaps American readers already know this, but in England a
'johnny' is a condom (aka rubber in America). Presumably that's a
fall-about joke for American schoolchildren reading about English
'rubbers' (aka erasers in America).