The most common account is that when people on fishing trips would begin to cook their catch their hound dogs would wail and bay in expectation. The problem is that no one has really tried hard enough.”

But as the noted southern food writer Robert Moss has written, “…Which isn’t to say that people haven’t tried to explain the origin of the hushpuppies. So where did the name originate? You can search the internet and find an array of possibilities. Fast forward native cornbread to today’s Southern cuisine and you have the tasty little spheres we are accustomed to pairing with deep-fried fish and seafood platters. The cornbread was popular during the American Civil War period because it was cheap and could be fried for a speedy snack or made into fluffy, high rising loaves. 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.Ĭornbread and fried bread have been around for centuries. Southern tribes, such as the Cherokee and Seminole, would grind up corn which would then be boiled. Likewise, native Americans cultivated maize crops and the resulting corn was either lined with alkaline salt to make hominy or ground into cornmeal. It is well known that indigenous societies from Mexico and Central America boiled and ground corn for the making of tortillas.

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.

Hush puupy