Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie (Paperback)

by Bill Neal (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"[Neal] was considered one of the nation's most talented young chefs. This book insures his influence on today's [cooks]." -- Cookbook Digest, November-December 2003

An authoritative journey through the baking and related confectionery cooking of the South. -- New York Times Book Review

Review
This delightful cookbook celebrates the glories of southern baking, with 300 recipes for the breads, biscuits, cakes, pies, cookies, and sweets that have been the pride of southern cooks for generations.

From his first chapter on cornmeal--with recipes for dumplings, hushpuppies, and four styles of spoonbread--to his delicious array of desserts--including persimmon pudding, lemon chess pie, and pecan cake with caramel icing--Bill Neal interweaves fascinating bits of culinary history with a native's knowledge of the cooking secrets of the rural South. He demystifies beaten biscuits, revives such southern standbys as baps and bannocks, and freshens up old favorites such as peach cobbler and fruitcake. Passing on the traditions of the southern kitchen, Neal pays tribute to the richness of the region's heritage.

Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie was first published in 1990.

An authoritative journey through the baking and related confectionery cooking of the South. (New York Times Book Review)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; illustrated edition edition (May 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807854743
• ISBN-13: 978-0807854747
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #420,022 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #29 in

  Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Potatoes

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real Keeper, January 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie: KCA Pbk (Paperback)

I have a several thousand cookbook collection - spanning some 40+ years. I have read each one and KNOW them. This book grabs your attention and holds it. I have a Top 100 Cookbooks (my very, very favorite ones) bookcase. A book has to pass rigid cooking/baking tests to get there. This book is there!!
Note: I have had FUN doing this all these years.
The recipe for "A Good White Bread" is about as tasty as white bread can ever be. (Hint: Make 1 BIG loaf with it) The "Pain de Babeurre" rolls are probably the best we have ever had. They raise big, fat, and are very soft inside. Where do I stop?
Get the book - trust me, you won't be sorry!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Baking, Sweet and Southern, September 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie: KCA Pbk (Paperback)

Bill Neal was one of the first cookbook authors I am aware of to incorporate culinary history, as well as cultural lore and perfectly chosen old photos into his "how-we-cook-it-in-the-South book." Thus, in BISCUITS, et al. he offers a compendium of history and culture truly representative of the Southern U. S., not merely a cliched pastiche of collarded, chitterlinged, cornbreaded and mint-juleped facts and details to pad out the receipes. Native American is distinguished from Colonial cookery, African-American from Appalachian, and Creole from Charleston as the author takes pains to convey, for example, why cooks in different regions of the South tossed different ingredients in with the cornmeal to produce their distinctive cornbreads--then he reproduces each of the recipes! At the same time Neal weaves the various influences together where appropriate; for example, from the introduction to Sweet Potato Yeast Bread: "This Mississippi bread has just about everything going for it . . . delicious and nutritious. . . Similar recipes are published in local cookbooks throughout the Southern coastal regions, wherever blacks live in large numbers. The bread is most likely of African and West Indian heritage [which use other] starchy tubers such as cassava, tanyah (elephant's ear), yams, and arrowroot." Reading this book is a pleasure unto itself, and all the recipes I have tried are outstanding. Specifically, the Appalachian Corn Bread cooked up as small fritters on a cast-iron griddle was food for the gods! (Hint: I snuck in one secret ingredient.) Bill Neal, if you read this review, e-mail me at [e-mail] so that I can tell you the secret ingredient (and ask you to marry me). P.S. Also, have you published other books since '95? Next on my list to read: Through the Garden Gate and Gardeners Latin. Signed, Mirabila X.(Oh, don't forget to give me the password, being my last name, so I'll know it is really you!)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Southern baking, September 26, 2005

By	Alexanderplatz (Kentucky) - See all my reviews

Bakers who have exhausted BILL NEAL'S SOUTHERN COOKING will find a mother lode of Southern baking recipes in BISCUITS, SPOONBREAD, and SWEET POTATO PIE. I agree with another reviewer who praises the recipe for "A Good White Loaf." It's one of the recipes I return to when I absolutely want to be sure that the bread is going to come out perfectly (Thanksgiving, e.g.).