A flat cake formerly baked on a hoe over the coals.
1787. The negro is called up about day-break, and is seldom allowed time enough to swallow three mouthfuls of homminy, or hoe-cake, but is driven out immediately to the field to hard labour.—American Museum, i. 215/1 (March).
1793.
| Some talk of Hoe-cake, fair Virginia’s pride, | |
| Rich Johnny-cake this mouth has often try’d; | |
| Both please me well, their virtues much the same; | |
| Alike their fabric as allied their fame. | |
Joel Barlow, ‘The Hasty-Pudding,’ p. 8 (Hallowell, 1815). |
1803. Open the door, said the old man, very calmly. ’Tis mayhap some negur-man that has run away, and is now come out of the woods to beg a hoe-cake, or a bit of hominy.—John Davis, ‘Travels in the U.S.A.,’ p. 129 (Lond.).
1809. [They] lived on hoe cakes and bacon.—W. Irving, ‘A History of New-York,’ i. 239. (For fuller quotation see GOUGE.)
1809. Carousing it soundly upon hoe cakes, bacon, and mint julep.—Id., ii. 173.
1816. What slaves I have seen, have fared coarsely, upon their hoe-cakes and ash-pone; but have been treated humanely, and not hard tasked.—Henry C. Knight (‘Arthur Singleton’), ‘Letters from the South and West,’ p. 78 (Boston, 1824).
1824. In order to get bread at one stage of his tour, [the boy] exchanged the scrape of his hat for a hoe-cake.—Mass. Spy, Feb. 4.
1827. Mr. Macon’s breakfast consisted of coffee, corn-bread, hoe-cake, boiled eggs, bacon, and cheese.—Id., June 27.
1827. Having appeased his appetite on buttermilk and hoe-cake, he stretched himself on his pallet.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 28: from the Macon Telegraph.
1832. Hoe-cake, which is the johnny-cake of New England, and ashpone, a coarse cake baked under the ashes, are in common use, as bread [in the South].—S. G. Goodrich, ‘System of Universal Geography,’ p. 260 (Boston).
1838. That fellow never stirs without his hoe-cake.—Caroline Gilman, ‘Recollections of a Southern Matron,’ p. 212.
1846. Mr. C. J. Ingersoll of Pennsylvania had heard a lady say that she would never forgive that Genoese navigator for having discovered such a vile country as this, when such pleasant cities as London and Paris remained to be explored; and he had thereby obliged ladies and gentlemen to come to these wilds to live on hominy and hoecake and what not.—House of Repr., Feb. 9: Cong. Globe, p. 345.
1852. Her corn-cake, in all its varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders; and she would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as she would narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her compeers had made to attain to her elevation.—Mrs. Stowe, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ chap. iv. (N.E.D.)
1857. Dem common niggers is only good to hoe de corn and fry de hoe-cake.—Knick. Mag., l. 587 (Dec.).
