Ashcake is a term for johnnycake — a simple cornmeal flatbread — specifically when baked directly in or on hot ashes rather than in a pan. The name describes the cooking method: the dough was placed directly onto hot ash embers, giving the bread a slightly charred outer crust. Historically associated with enslaved people, indigenous communities, and frontier cooking in the Eastern US. The term is now primarily historical and regional.
The recreated Civil War-era camp menu included ashcake cooked in the embers of an open fire, just as soldiers would have eaten it.
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(Eastern, _, US) A johnnycake.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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