Golden Catheads

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Louise from Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Hello, Mary Louise. Welcome to the program.

Oh, thank you.

That doesn’t sound like a Kenosha, Wisconsin accent.

No, I don’t think so.

No. I was raised in Upper East Tennessee.

Okay, great. Very good. So what’s your question today, Mary Louise?

Okay, well, I had heard you talking about childhood misunderstandings, and I had moved away during my adult years from East Tennessee. And when my son was two years old, we had moved back to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And one of our things we did was we would read signs that he would point out to him. And we were one day, we just moved back to Tennessee, driving past a local restaurant that had one of the signs where the proprietor can change and make messages on it. And the sign said, basically, golden cat heads for breakfast.

Yum.

Say that again, please.

Golden cat heads for breakfast.

Yum.

Yum.

Poor kitties.

How dare they?

That’s basically what my son thought. He was kind of horrified by the fact that they were eating cat heads for breakfast. Having been raised there, explain to him that that was a term for biscuits.

Okay.

I might have guessed it. Of course it wasn’t felines, but I might have guessed catfish, but biscuits.

Biscuits.

-huh.

And he wasn’t really sure because he had just learned that there were people there that ate rabbits and squirrels.

Oh, so why not cat heads?

Yeah, to him, you know, our Siamese is now in danger.

Well, I’ve eaten rabbits and squirrels myself. And, you know, as a regular practice, we never eat cats either.

But kitties, no.

So biscuits.

So Mary Louise, do you know how to make these and will you make me some?

Yeah, describe one for us.

Yes, I can make biscuits, but probably not as good as my grandmother could.

Well, none of us hold the candle to our grandparents, do we?

No.

Basically, they’re just flour and egg and buttermilk.

And how big are they?

About the size of your fist.

About the size of a fist.

That’s pretty good.

Yeah, they’re a good size.

Well, you know, whenever I meet a cat, I usually hold my fist up to its face, and then it starts rubbing up against my fist. And I was told that that was because they think the fist looks like a cat head because it’s about the same size, you know, and they’re sort of rubbing up against it like a cat.

And, yeah.

So are you wondering about why they’re called cat heads, perhaps?

It’s the size, right?

How did that get started?

Do you know the southern humorist Louis Grizzard?

Oh, yeah.

Well, he’s written about this and talked about it.

Grizzard.

Oh, is it Grizzard?

That’s what Mary Louise just said.

Yes, he would correct you.

Well, I don’t know. I’ve only read his work. I haven’t heard him speak.

But he’s passed now, hasn’t he?

Yes, he has.

Okay.

He thought that they were called that because they were as big as a cat’s head, and he knew them very well. And the way he describes them was a particular kind of joy, you know, a cat head biscuit showing up on your plate was a thing to be celebrated, right?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

But, yeah, as far as I know, it’s the idea that the cat head biscuit is about the same size as a cat head. I mean, they are big.

Mary Louise, you’ve heard us talk about the Dictionary of American Regional English. They’ve got an entry for this as well. Their uses of it that they find come from Tennessee and North Carolina and West Virginia, pretty much the same part of the country that you’re talking about.

Yeah.

A couple from Georgia. And they find uses in a collection of scholarly works called Dialect Notes as far back as 1930. So it’s got a bit of history.

I would not be surprised if we looked a little harder, Martha, that we could find it well back into the 1800s.

I would not be surprised at all.

No, I wouldn’t either.

I wouldn’t either.

And it follows the same pattern that so many food names have, which is that they’re just named for what they look like. I mean, think about a head of cabbage. It looks like a head.

Oh, very good.

You know, and cabbage comes from that whole family of words like capital. It means head. So, yeah, it’s just in a long line of foods that are named for what they look like.

Golden cat head biscuits.

Yum.

Oh, man.

Mary Louise, thank you for sharing this food word with us. You know how we are. We love the food language.

We do.

Oh, me too.

Cathead biscuits and hush puppies.

All right.

Best of luck to you.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Yum.

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