Scone versus fry bread in Utah

[ajramsay]

I just moved to Utah from Illinois and was mystified by a fast food chain called Sconecutter. So I went in to try these "scones" and after I tasted them, I said to myself, "This is fry bread." I had had fry bread some years ago at a Native American tepee set up at a festival, and it was just the same as these "scones." But it definitely was not a scone like those I've had at high tea elsewhere -- or made myself. As near as I can tell, only in Utah do they call fry bread a "scone." So the question is, why do they call it a scone? And a secondary question is, Where did fry bread come from? I found one web reference saying that fry bread was something familiar to the Native Americans and the American pioneers, but it's unclear who had it first.

Any food historians or food anthropologists who can give me a lead? Thanks for listening.

Mystified in Utah

[ajramsay]

I've done some more research, as best as I could, and have more information related to my question about Utah "scones."

I am not the only one to have this question. Raymond Sokolov, Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, found the "Utah scone" stranger than strange and did some research on it. Apparently, he writes about it in his book Fading Feast: A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional Foods. I have yet to see it, but I'm going to get my library to find it. He did write about it in an article in Natural History magazine as well, but I don't know which issue -- I do have a copy of the article. At any rate, he confirms that the Utah scone is unique to Utah, and that it bears no resemblance to the scones of the British Isles, which are baked quick bread, not deep-fried yeast dough. Utah scones are more like Native American fry bread and Mexican sopaipillas. One can only suppose that early settlers of Utah imitated these fried foods, sweetened them up a little, and for mysterious reasons of their own, named them "scones." For the most part, native Utahns remain unaware that their scones are not the same as other scones.

The history of fry bread and sopaipillas is less mysterious, but still hard to date firmly. Foodtimeline.com does have some information on them at http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food...ml#sopaipillas which is also enlightening. It's still more likely that sopaipillas existed before Utah scones. It's also interesting that Utah dessert scones are often served with honey, as are sopaipillas. There's even a restaurant here that describes sopaipillas as "Mexican scones."

Until someone looks at the diaries and other historical records of the early Mormon settlers to find the earliest occurrence of scones, we can never know exactly what happened. But I feel vindicated that greater minds than I have tried to figure this out. Maybe someday I'll be inspired to work on this more. If anyone ever hears of a food historian in Utah, please let me know. Thanks for listening.

[phatch]

My mom was born and raised in podunk Utah. She would fry extra bread dough in long strips for breakfast for us. Butter them up and add jam/jelly or maple syrup. Very tasty. Always called them "dough-gads", something that seems to have trickled down through scandinavian ancestry according to her. Yes, others here in utah would call them scones.

Fry bread in my experience is a fried quick bread. The Navajo taco being how you most often see it anymore. My sister's friend, a Navajo in Page AZ has had it all her life.

The yeasty scone does seem to be a Utah thing, most often created from commercial frozen bread dough. It could easily hearken to the pioneer heritage that lives on in lots of cooking still, or even to some of the cowboy cooking as that sort of thing would easily raise all day on the chuckwagon and cook quickly in some oil or fat with dinner.

On a date once to see Everclear, Belly, and a few other bands perform, the Belly guitarist was happy that Utah had Sconecutters. Where ever she was from, she had them too, and it wasn't just Utah. Can't seem to find a sconecutter home page anywhere.

Phil (Not a native Utahn)

[ajramsay]

I grant you that it's hard to believe that it's only a Utah thing. If I weren't here, I wouldn't believe it. I'm not saying that there aren't other fried bread things around the country and the world. As near as I can tell, what makes the Utah scone unique is its name (conflicting with the scone that everybody else knows). And it's not like every other fried bread thing, like a doughnut or your mom's dough-gads (and I don't think Utahns would call that a scone). The shape (square or big round pancake thing) puts it in the league of the sopaipilla and "Navajo taco". There's also a fried bread thing called a beignet in Louisiana, which sounds like it's a square shape. Utah seems to have both a sweet scone, which resembles the sopaipilla, and a savory scone, and that's the one that reminded me of fry bread (I've seen fry bread recipes that use yeast).

As far as Sconecutter goes, I can't find any evidence that it exists anywhere other than Utah. Check www.sconecutter.com and the only locations listed are in Utah. So I'm not sure what that guitarist was talking about.

I'm not so mystified about the scone's development per se. It probably was some kind of pioneer thing, although as I say the shape relates it to other foods that were around the Utah settlers, which implies some borrowing. The strange thing to me is that it is called a scone. Why anyone who knows what a baked scone is would call this fried thing a scone is a mystery to me. It's not unlike a doughnut, so why not call it a doughnut? Or a sopaipilla? Or fry bread? This is what I was trying to find the answer to, and I get the feeling that no one knows. The bewildering thing is that most native Utahns seem to be totally unaware that there is any other kind of scone.

All that said, thanks for responding to my message. I was starting to wonder if anybody had read it. If you're interested, I do recommend you read that article by Sokolov. It's in Natiural History, June 1985, Vol. 94, p. 82. Your library should be able to get you a copy.

Alice in Sandy, Utah (not a native)

[phatch]

I tried www.sconecutter.com when I first posted and it wouldn't resolve. Does today. Oh the vagaries of the Internet.

That date I mentioned was about 10 years ago so they may have had some out of state franchises at the time.

Phil

[kokopuffs]

All along HWY 395 that parallels the High Sierras in Eastern California you can get fry bread tacos at some Paiute establishments in Lone Pine or Bishop - among other places as well. Long live eastern California, my stomping ground, home to the bloody red moon.