Bunions and Barleycorn

Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: April 2024

In my 40s I inherited three family cookbooks. The original owners: Aunt Annie and my grandmother, Mary Serina, born 1885-ish.

Anne and Mary were two Southern cooks who could whip up lard biscuits so light, they’d fly past my eager fingers, right into my watering mouth. I blame my two culinary matriarchs for my girth today.

But, oh, what a delicious way to go.

Mother’s Cook Book, Granny’s contribution, was filled with pages so stained with drips and spills, you could boil it down and make a broth. Its antediluvian recipes, then called receipts, were measured in thimblefuls, dashes, dots, and dustings.

But receipts were only part of the book. The remainder was a dowry manual on how to establish a household. There was practical advice for slopping a hog. How to clean boots, aka your hubby’s hog-sloppin’ uggs. How to sew, polish, clean, and repair practically anything. How to germinate a vegetable/flower garden, then dry, can, and arrange the yield.

Most intriguing of all were essays on how to rear one’s children –so they don’t become hogs.

No offense to hogs. They’re smart, playful, have an excellent memory, and let’s face it, they are covered in delicious bacon – please don’t judge me.

This month’s article is inspired not by any of the cookbooks’ recipes and essays, but by newspaper clippings that Annie glued inside her cookbook covers.

My favorite Annie-factoid refers to barleycorn, a term we rarely hear anymore. Those who recognize it, might associate it with contemporary expressions: Dixie-fried (snockered). Or trizzarkled (really snockered).

Here’s how barley and boot met. The length of a grain of barley is about 1/3 inch long. Barley was abundant in English fields. Eventually, it became the official measurement for footwear. End result: one additional barleycorn length equaled one shoe size.

Surprisingly, the one-third inch measurement is still used today to calculate shoe sizes in English-speaking countries (though not-so-much in the U.S.).

Annie pasted the barleycorn clipping in her book, perhaps because she had foot issues and foot-facts intrigued her – though she had no corns. Bunions the size of pomegranates, yes, but no corns. If only she’d substituted her 6 barleycorn-size shoes for a barleycorn 9-er. Alas, her pain ballooned right along with her bunions.

Even though Annie trashed her feet with high-heels, she could still trizzarkle with the best of ‘em. After a mug or two, she began to think of fermented barley as a proper foot medication.

Nevertheless, whilst snockered, attempting to lace her boots – well, she could barley make ends meet.

Annie’s cookbook: Good Meals and How to Prepare Them, A Guide to Meal-planning, Cooking, and Serving. Katharine A. Fisher, Director, Good Housekeeping Institute, fifth|edition, 1927.