Kentucky accent (Louisville, Covington, Bardstown: home, universities, delivery)

[Wardendresden]

Originally Posted by Jzer21

I was born and bred in Western, KY and lived there for 25 years...and I had to Google "hot brown"-- never heard of it. So, I'll agree with everything that you said save the hot brown bit

Dang, Jz, live in Kentucky all those years and not know what a HOT BROWN is???? I'm afraid we're going to have to revoke your membership in the Kentucky Colonels.

I dont even live there anymore, but I sure the heck miss having one now and then.

By the way, I worked in the insurance industry while in Kentucky. We had a joke about what a Hot Brown was:

Take a young family with two mortgages, living in an unprotected rural area (or volunteer fire department only), with a wood burning stove---and you have a Kentucky HOT BROWN (fire)!

[Kamsack]

Originally Posted by CraigCreek

Really, no hot browns in Western Ky?? I am astonished!

Learn something new every day...Meanwhile, I hope you'll take yourself to Louisville, where the dish originated at the Brown Hotel, and sample a hot brown. Hot browns are excellent cold-weather food - but not ideal for summer.

I grew up in Western KY as well (Madisonville) and never heard of that term either. I have/had many cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all from the Madisonville-Evansville-Providence area there and at least in my growing up never recall it mentioned. I grew up there late 60s through the 80s.

Off this immediate subject a bit.... but I never developed a real southern accent like my older brothers/sisters/parents, etc. They all have very thick southern accents. In jr high-high school I was always teased and asked where I was born ( I would say northern Illinois).....and once I came back from college in Iowa and to the local Krogers and they checkout lady asked where I was from as I talked funny and I had to prove I was from there. Very odd I find it.... I do remember watching a lot of TV so maybe that was it....also I disliked the southern heat/humidity and wanted to always move north so maybe that was it....

Dan

[Kamsack]

Originally Posted by Jzer21

Well, you were probably on to something when you said that Western Kentuckians sound like Nashvillians. There's no Louisville exposure there-everything comes from Nashville. I can't tell you much (if anything) about Louisville's history, but I can about Nashville.

Hi there...I grew up in western KY (Madisonville) in the late 60s thru the 80s and back then at least in my area at that time it seemed split between St Louis and Nashville... at that time Nashville had no pro sports teams so Cardinals (St Louis football/baseball) was followed.

I was the youngest of 4...so when I was young my oldest brother was already married and out school and lived in Okolona, after the 70s busing issue, moved to Oldham county. But yeah our focus back then wasnt so much on Louisville (unless you had family there). In the many trips back to M'ville since I left (my parents and other family still reside in area) I would agree over the past 20 yrs the focus is much more Nashville now than when I grew up due to its rise as a major city.

[tuckessee]

Originally Posted by urbancharlotte

That's what happens when a Midwestern state gets lumped in with the south by the US census. That said, my wife is from Eastern KY and her accent is without a doubt "southern". Then again, I've heard similar accents in Indiana, southern Ohio, and rural Illinois. IMO, the best description is "rural accents" rather than "southern accents". In some parts of the south, the "southern accent" sounds less rural than the accents in rural parts of Midwestern states (if that makes any sense).

The definition is Upland South, not rural, and carries across the Ohio river into the extreme southern Midwest except for Ohio unless they're descended from southerners, and south to northern Alabama, Georgia the western parts of the Carolinas and Virginia. It seems you're tiptoeing around saying you believe Kentucky not to be the South and that would just be ignorant on your part because culturally, historically, biologically and climatically it is.

[masonsdaughter]

CraigCreek, I suspect your goetta is very close to what we in the knobs section call fishmeat. Not one of my favorite dishes. Also our family recipe for stack cake is thinly rolled fried or baked biscuit dough, with sweetened applesauce between the layers. Much better the second or third day when the applesauce has soaked into the bread. Hot browns, with toast, mashed potatoes, turkey, ham, slice of tomato, bacon, and white sauce on top, under the broiler just long enough to slightly brown. I find that recipes vary from region to region and family to family. I like to try different ones. Same for accents. I like to hear different accents. I knew a lady from Cincinnati who had a German-southern accent, and just loved to hear her talk. Same for a couple of men who had a very soft, southern accent. But the I find accents fascinating.

[CraigCreek]

Originally Posted by masonsdaughter

CraigCreek, I suspect your goetta is very close to what we in the knobs section call fishmeat. Not one of my favorite dishes. Also our family recipe for stack cake is thinly rolled fried or baked biscuit dough, with sweetened applesauce between the layers. Much better the second or third day when the applesauce has soaked into the bread. Hot browns, with toast, mashed potatoes, turkey, ham, slice of tomato, bacon, and white sauce on top, under the broiler just long enough to slightly brown. I find that recipes vary from region to region and family to family. I like to try different ones. Same for accents. I like to hear different accents. I knew a lady from Cincinnati who had a German-southern accent, and just loved to hear her talk. Same for a couple of men who had a very soft, southern accent. But the I find accents fascinating.

Well, goetta never was "mine" - I just lived in Cincy for a few years where I first heard about it but had never heard of it previously. Nor have I ever been tempted to try it, since it seems to be a German form of haggis!(which I have had a few times). No fish in goetta - perhaps "fishmeat" refers to bait??

interesting variation of stack cake - my Eastern Kentucky friends use apple butter between the layers, and their cake is spice cake, not biscuit dough. My mother's strawberry shortcake used rounds of piecrust between the layers of strawberries and cream. Perhaps the Scottish tradition is in play here.

I never heard of including mashed potatoes in a hot brown! The other ingredients sound right, if you substitute Mornay (cheese) sauce for white sauce. And the strips of bacon have to be crossed in a St Andrew's cross atop the open face sandwich (two pieces of toast: one in the middle, the other piece sliced lengthwise and one triangle placed long side in on either side of the uncut piece of toast. Using an oval plate makes it work better).

The older Kentucky cookbooks - those by Cissy Gregg, "Out of Kentucky Kitchens" by Marian Flexner, "Look No Farther" and the other Boone Tavern cookbooks - contain some fascinating bits of regional and cultural history as well as wonderful dishes. Good reading; good eating!

[masonsdaughter]

No, no fish in fishmeat. Just sousemeat with corn meal mixed in. If ya gotta ask, ya don't want to know. As for the hot brown, give it a try with the mashed potatoes. With the stack cake, the applesauce soaks into the crust layers and flavors them, but I do want to try it with the spice cake recipe. Can you post?

[CraigCreek]

Sorry - I'll have to look in some of those Kentucky cookbooks for the recipe, as stack cake wasn't part of my family tradition. It seems to be more commonly found among families with eastern Kentucky roots. A friend of mine who is originally from Pikeville reminisces fondly over stack cake, and I've had it with homemade apple butter at potlucks in Berea: good stuff.

Let me see if I can find a stack cake recipe that sounds "right" - will post if found.

[CraigCreek]

If you search online for Kentucky stack cake, bunches of recipes will pop up. There are some with molasses, some with meringue (!Can't imagine...), some made with dried apples, some with applesauce, some with apple butter. Commonalities seem to be some sort of apples between multiple layers of thin cake - otherwise, it looks as if grannies used what was on hand, and what they'd been taught by their own grannies.

[masonsdaughter]

Ok, I will look. Thanks for your reply