Cooking and castle-building

"Kate, do you know how to make good cornbread?" asked Emeline. "I am especially fond of it. But I am so heartily sick of ' Indian bread,' and ^ Indian cakes,' as Northern and Eastern cooks persist in calling the wretched preparations of corn meal they manufacture, that I hope you will devote a chapter of your book to the consideration of corn-bread." "Thank you, Emeline, for the suggestion. Corn-bread being a Southern institution or specialty, is very much neglected by Northern and Southern cooks ; or, when made by them, is so * doctored,' as a general rule, that a genuine lover of the article scarcely recognizes it in the vile mixture of grease, soda, eggs, milk, and sugar, thickened with poor corn meal ground so fine as to be destitute of character or sweetness. Southern corn is as much superior to that grown at the North, as a Hubbard squash is to a yellow pumpkin ; but Southern corn, ground as fine as the meal that is generally used at the North, loses much of its excellence. Southern cooks undoubtedly excel in the art of making corn-bread of various kinds, among which the pone and hoe- cake used to take first rank. But since open fires, Dutch ovens, and bake-kettles, have been superseded by ranges and cooking-stoves, pone and hoe-cake have been superseded by ' dodgers,' and other varieties of corn-bread, baked upon the griddle, or in the oven, as convenience dictates. The pone, in the old time, was made of meal, warm water, yeast, and a little salt ; and after becoming light by fermentation, was baked, a large loaf, in a Dutch oven, for five or six hours. The hoe-cake was still more simple, being corn meal mixed with warm water and a little salt, into a stifi" dough, fashioned by the hands into cakes an inch thick, and baked on a board, tilted before the fire, or, in the negro cabins, upon the hoe, which no doubt gave it the name. The dodger is a legitimate descendant of the hoe-cake, and I think deserves precedence in the corn-bread ranks. To make it, take a quart of corn meal, a teaspoonful of sugar, and a salt-spoonful of salt. Scald with boiling water, leaving the paste so thick that when moulded into cakes in the hand it retains its form, or if placed upon the griddle with a spoon, will remain heaped and not spread into thin cakes. Put a piece of butter, half the size of a pea, just where the dodger is to be placed on the griddle, and when melted, lay the cake upon it. In like manner fill the griddle. When brown, turn them over ; but just before turning, place a small bit