Also called pone bread.a baked or fried bread usually made of cornmeal.
2.
a loaf or oval-shaped cake of any type of bread, esp. corn bread.
Origin: 1605–15, Americanism; < Virginia Algonquian (E sp.) apones, appoans, poan < Proto-Algonquian *apwa⋅n- thing roasted or baked, deriv. of *apwe⋅- to roast, bake
john·ny·cake also jon·ny·cake (jŏn'ē-kāk') n.
New England & Upper Midwest Cornmeal bread usually shaped into a flat cake and baked or fried on a griddle. Also called regionally ashcake, batter bread, battercake, corn cake, cornpone, hoecake, journey cake, pone, Shawnee cake.
[Perhaps by folk etymology from jonakin.] When the Native Americans showed the Pilgrims how to cook with maize, they must have taught them to make johnnycake, a dense cornmeal bread whose thick batter is shaped into a flat cake and baked or fried on a griddle. Johnnycake, also spelled jonnycake and also called journey cake and Shawnee cake, is a New England specialty, especially in Rhode Island, where it is celebrated by the Society for the Propagation of Johnny Cakes. The Usquepaugh, Rhode Island, Johnnycake Festival features johnnycakes made of white Indian corn called flint corn. Outside New England the name johnnycake is best known in the Upper Midwest, but the food itself is most popular in the South and South Midland states, where it is known as ashcake, batter bread, battercake, corn cake, cornpone, or hoecake. The color of the cornmeal, the consistency of the batter, the size of the cake, and the cooking method can vary from region to region. For example, an ashcake, according to a Georgia informant, is "made by wrapping cornbread batter in cabbage leaves and burying it gently at the back of the fireplace" (Dudley Clendinen).
[Virginia Algonquian poan, appoans, cornbread.] A staple of the early American colonies from New England southward to Virginia was pone, a bread made by Native Americans from flat cakes of cornmeal dough baked in ashes. Pone is one of several Virginia Algonquian words (including hominy and tomahawk) borrowed into the English of the Atlantic seaboard. The word pone, usually in the compound cornpone, is now used mainly in the South, where it means cakes of cornbread baked on a griddle or in hot ashes—as the Native Americans originally cooked it.