The first recipe we uncovered in our Forgotten Recipies of the Smokies series, was for Soft Egg Bread from the book: Shenandoah Valley Cooking: Recipes and Kitchen Lore. Some may recognize this recipe as something similar to what we would call “spoonbread” today. It was a staple on many tables in Virginia prior to the Revolutionary War. The addition of baking soda would have come a little later, because it was not invented until the 1790’s. However, whipping the egg whites would have given it the lift and air it needed to rise. Once baking soda was added, it reacted with the acid in the clabber or buttermilk to also give it some lift. So while spoonbread is not a forgotten dish, this original recipe is certainly closer to what Mordecai Lewis would have brought with him to have on his table here in East Tennessee.

Here is the original recipe from the book: Shenandoah Valley Cooking: Recipes and Kitchen Lore, and our modernized version follows.

Soft Egg Bread (Original Recipe)

1 cup of boiling water poured over one cup cornmeal
1 cup of clabber or buttermilk
2 eggs (yolks only) well beaten
1⁄2 teaspoon soda
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lard
Then add beaten whites of eggs, bake in a greased pudding dish about one hour, serve with a spoon.

Testing Notes:

We used buttermilk and plain yellow cornmeal. However, plain white cornmeal can be used as well. We baked it at 325-degrees to keep with the instruction of baking for 1 hour, in a medium pottery casserole dish, but you could use an 8-10 inch cast iron skillet or 9 inch baking pan. We served it warm with a drizzle of honey. Honey or molasses adds quite a bit of flavor and would have been how it was originally enjoyed, since both were plentiful in the 1700s.