Are hushpuppies called hush puppies? Here’s What to Do Next

From Red Horse to Hush Puppy

The Palmetto State was not the only place where Southerners were frying gobs of cornmeal batter. In 1940, Earl DeLoach, the fishing columnist for the Augusta Chronicle, noted that “Red Horse cornbread is often called Hush Puppies on the Georgia side of the Savannah River.” They had been calling it that since at least 1927, when the Macon Telegraph reported that the mens bible class of First Methodist Church was holding a fish fry where chairman Roscoe Rouse would “cook the fish and the hushpuppies and make the coffee.”

Hush puppies first got national attention thanks to a bunch of tourists fishing down in Florida. In 1934, Pennsylvanias Harrisburg Sunday Courier ran a travel piece about central Florida, where the author fished at Mr. Joe Browns camp on Lake Harris near Orlando. “Brown can cook,” the writer declared, and his menu included fried fish, French fried potatoes, “and a delicious cornbread concoction which Brown called Hush Puppies.”

Before long, hushpuppies were popping up in American Cookery, American Legion Magazine, and Boys Life, where National Scout Commission Dan Beard devoted one of his monthly columns to his fishing trip to Key West. He published the “famous recipe” of Mrs. J. G. Cooper, “an expert on hush-puppies.” It called for one quart of white water-ground cornmeal, two eggs, three teaspoons of baking powder, and one teaspoon of salt, which were mixed into a batter and cooked in the same pan as the fish.

As we have seen with other Southern food origin myths, like that of chicken and dumplings, the cutesy tales often undersell the quality of old Southern dishes, treating them as examples of cooks taking inexpensive, humble ingredients and making the best of them. But early accounts of hushpuppies and red horse bread make clear that diners treated this new food not as a cheap substitute but rather as a luxury worthy of admiration.

One reporter who penned an account of the red horse bread at a Romeo Govan fish fry commented, “This was a new bread to the writer, and so delicious, that I beg lovers of the finny tribe to try some.” When a correspondent for Modern Beekeeping visited a fish fry, he noted, “Every visiting lady was soon busy with pencil and paper taking down the recipe. (The men were too.)”

If you’re making things up and not researching, why not lob in a few repulsive African American stereotypes? One persevering narrative asserts the dredgings remaining after battering and frying fish were sent to the slave quarters where the women added a little milk, egg, and onion and fried it up. The aroma led hungry children and starving dogs to whine for handouts and Mammies would give out spoonfuls saying, “hush childies, hush puppies.” Apparently, they had to scrimp on cornmeal but had plenty of milk and eggs laying around,” says Moss satirically.

The story of the hushpuppy is an example of truth actually being more interesting than fiction. As Moss concludes, “And so there you have it. It may not be as cute and dramatic as panicked soldiers or plantation cooks trying to silence a pack of dogs, but the true story of hushpuppies has more than enough twists and turns to make it compelling.”

This probably is the most outlandish story. Cajuns in southern Louisiana used to batter and fry salamanders (aka mud puppies). It is said they were called hushpuppies because eating such lowly food was not something a southern wife would want her neighbors to know so they kept “hush about it.” According to Moss, “…it’s a shame that none of the writers who blithely repeat these tales see fit to dig into the historical record and try to substantiate them.” Most writers will repeat a few of these clashing stories, knit their brows, and finally, say “who knows” (but of course they will have a recipe).

A senator from Mississippi (H.H. Casteel) expounded in a speech in 1915 that pot liquor in his part of the country was known as hushpuppy because it kept the “houn’ dawgs” from growling. It seems that the Senator was describing the growling in a diner’s stomach and there was a much better use of pot liquor than throwing it to the dogs.

Sorting myth from reality is a thorny job when it comes to the origin of the hushpuppy, though it stands to reason that its progenitor dates back to southern North American food practices. It is well known that indigenous societies from Mexico and Central America boiled and ground corn for the making of tortillas. Likewise, native Americans cultivated maize crops and the resulting corn was either lined with alkaline salt to make hominy or ground into cornmeal. Southern tribes, such as the Cherokee and Seminole, would grind up corn which would then be boiled. Of course, these working techniques did not produce what we think of as a hushpuppy, but we can reasonably assume that they were forerunners of cornmeal batter dropped by the spoonfuls into hot grease until crisp and golden brown.

What are Hush Puppies Served With?

Across the American South – or at any authentic Southern food joint – hush puppies are served as a side dish. Generally, hush puppies will be also served with a dipping sauce or with cheesy grits. (No, there is no such thing as ‘too savory’)! They are a compliment to some smokey barbecue or any of the main show-stoppers at a fish fry.

For example, river fish like catfish and bass are the most common battered and deep-fried fish you would find at a classic Southern fish fry. In the meantime, traditional barbeque is slow-smoked pork or brisket, and you haven’t lived until you have tried it at least once.

Hush Puppies! A 2 Minute History!

Once a fairly obscure Southern side dish, hushpuppies have become something of a staple in seafood restaurants across the country. At The Fish Box in Seattle, fried halibut, salmon, and catfish dinners include two complimentary golden brown hushpuppies. The Mermaid Inn in New York City offers a side of hushpuppies with corn and chile remoulade for just seven bucks—not bad for Manhattan.

The crisp fried cornmeal orbs are starting to be served in more and more barbecue joints outside the South, too. When I was out in Salt Lake City this summer, I was surprised when I ordered a platter of ribs and brisket at R&R Barbecue and discovered it came with two ping pong ball-sized hushpuppies nestled against the little plastic tub of mac ‘n cheese.

Of course, here in the Carolinas we’ve been eating hushpuppies alongside fried seafood and barbecue for decades. In fact, the Carolinas can proudly claim to be the birthplace of this now-iconic American food.

A hushpuppy is a simple treat—thick cornmeal batter dropped in spheres (or nuggets or fingers) into hot oil and fried till crisp and brown. But the origin of the name . . . well, that’s where it all goes to the dogs.

Over the years, any number of would-be culinary historians have taken a stab at explaining the origin of the oddly-named hushpuppy. They’ve come up with an array of tales that range from silly to stupid.

The most frequently-repeated story involves fishing expeditions where anglers return to camp and start frying their catch over the fire. The aroma sets their hounds to howling and yapping in anticipation, so the cooks fry up bits of cornmeal batter and toss them to the dogs to hush them. I have no idea why people would take a bunch of hunting dogs on a fishing trip, but that’s how the story goes.

But remember we’re talking about a Southern food here, so many folks feel compelled to link its origins—likely every other dish or recipe in the South—to the Civil War, since that’s the only event of any significance that has happened in these parts. Many learned historians, therefore, have transferred the hushpuppy origin story from fishermen to soldiers.

A band of Confederate troops, the typical story in this line goes, were cooking dinner around a campfire one night when they heard Yankee soldiers approaching. Thinking quickly, they fried up some cornmeal cakes, tossed them to their raucous dogs, and ordered, “hush, puppies!”

Not all Southern food authorities buy this story. A vocal camp insists that all Southern recipes must have their roots not in the Civil War but rather on cotton plantations back in the antebellum days. One account that has been cut-and-pasted onto any number of Internet sites (I can’t figure out who originally wrote it) asserts that thrifty cooks in plantation houses would send excess catfish dredging “down to the slave quarters.” Though cornmeal was in short supply, they apparently had plenty of dairy and other ingredients on hand, for “the women added a little milk, egg and onion and fried it up.”

Pre-Internet variants of this story take the extra step of weaving in a few racist stereotypes. In a 1947 syndicated column, for instance, Clementine Paddleford cited no less of an authority than W. W. Pierson, the dean of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina. The learned dean explained that when cooks fried cornmeal batter, the aroma led “hungry children and half-starved dogs” to whine for handouts, so “softhearted Mammies would dole out the pones, saying, ‘Hush childies, hush puppies.’”

Such explanations doesn’t sit well with Europhiles, who insist that a bunch of Southern bumpkins would never have figured out how to fry cornmeal batter on their own. Instead, they credit the culinary genius of the French, specifically a group of Ursuline nuns who arrived in New Orleans in the 1720s and were forced to make do with cornmeal from the local Native Americans. The women made a batter and hand-shaped it into patties they called croquettes de maise, and the recipe quickly spread across the South—and somehow started being used to hush dogs, the same as in all the other stories.

It’s a shame that none of the writers who blithely repeat these tales see fit to dig into the historical record and try to substantiate them—say, by finding a single instance of a source in the 19th century that calls fried corn bread “hushpuppies”. The standard procedure is to rattle off two or three conflicting stories, shrug the shoulders, and say, “I guess we’ll never know . . . but here’s a recipe!”

The real story is out there, and it’s is far more interesting and informative than a bunch of silliness about soldiers, nuns, and barking dogs. And it all starts along the banks of the Edisto River in the Midlands of South Carolina.