There's a recipe for a number of African American dishes in Daryl Cumberland Dance's anthology "From My People,400 Years of African American Folklore" {W.W. Norton & Company, 2002}

There's no recipe for shortnin' bread per se, but there is one from Sandra Y. Govan or "My Mama's Corn Pone or Hot Water Corn Bread"
{pp. 447-448}.

Govan provides commentary for cornpones that sounds like the decription of hoe cakes or johnny cakes and not the rich shortnin bread that Dorothy Scarborough describes in her 1925 book 'On The Trail Of Negro Folk Songs' as being a delicacy that is made with bacon bits and bacon gravy {dripping}.

Govan says " Nobody else [but my mother and me]..likes the thickish, unsweetened mimimalist flat fried bread....While regular oven-baked or stove-top corn bread could be split and buttered, cornpones were cookes without any added sweetener and eaten without any added fat"

-snip-

Govan writes that her mother learned how to make cornpones on an open hearth fireplace skillet from her grandmother who was a slave in Louisiana. While Govan's mother liked to vrumple cold cornpones into a class of buttermilk and eat it with a spoon, Govan considered writes that she considered herself to be more a purist because she ate her cornpones hot or cold, eatedn alone or with homemade soup, chili, or beans-but never with buttermilk..

Here is the recipe that Govan provided [Note-I can't vouch for this recipe]:

Ingredients & equipment:
Yellow cornmeal {do not use white meal}
flour
Salt
1 egg {optional}
i teaspoon vegetable shortning {Crisco}
1 teaspoon baking powder
Boiling water {as much as needed to make thick batter,
consistency 1/3 - 1/2 cup
1 large or medium cast iron skillet
1 or 3 teaspoon of hot oil

Directions:
Sift together two parts yellow cornmeal to one part flour {1/2 cup meal to 1/2 cup of flour; shake salt {scant 1/3 teaspoon approximately}.

Add shortning; then add boiling water.

Stir until shortening melts and mixture forms thick batter {if egg is added, less water is required}

Add in baking powder after mixture cools slightly. Stir quickly, {but not too long} until baking powder is absorbed.

Heat skillet with oil or Crisco.

While batter still hot/warm, spoon out enough to shape several flat oval shaped pones in hand {like mixing mud pies] batter should be thick, or fairly stiff, consistency. Pat doown and srop each pone into hot skillet with melted Crisco. Turn heat down to medium and cook slowly, flipping when edge of pone bubbles and firms up-
pone should be golden underneath. Flip and wait until other side is also deep golden color, not "pancake" brown.

Serve stack of fresh hot cornpones with homemade soup, chili, red beans and rice,, greens, buttermilk etc. {Those raised on Jiffy mix can add a modicum of sugar [1-2 tablespoons] if absolutely necessary, but be warned, such adulteration drastically sffects the "old-time"
taste".   



Azizi