Scorns, Fried Biscuit Dough

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Kimberly and I’m calling from Harrisonburg,

Virginia. How are you today? Doing great. Thanks for calling, Kimberly. What’s up?

So I have a question about a word. My family on my mother’s side is rather large. My mom was one

Of nine kids and growing up they ate a breakfast food. Now they were pretty poor back in those days

But this was a very normal breakfast that they had all the time, and it was called scorns.

And what it is is simply just biscuit dough fried.

You literally just grab a hunk of biscuit dough and throw it in the frying pan and fry it.

And so, you know, each one kind of has different shapes.

And then you serve it with butter, and that’s it.

And so we will have these when we have our family get-togethers, such as for Christmas or other things.

But we’ve always just wondered, where does that word come from?

Because we’ve never met anyone who knows what they are.

And so I’m really curious if there’s anyone else out there who knows what scorns are and calls them that.

Scorns. And this is just simply fried biscuit dough.

There’s no corn involved, in other words.

Right. No, just no corn, just fried biscuit dough,

Which I think typically made with like, you know, from scratch biscuit dough, just from flour.

But I think you could also do it from frozen dough.

Although my mom said they never used canned dough.

Okay.

I got to tell you, Kimberly, I don’t know that one.

I have a bunch of food books.

And by food books, I mean books about food words, books about food etymology, cookbooks in four languages.

And I have never come across the word scorn to refer to any kind of food dish.

Now, if you Google it and do kind of clever searches with scorn and dough or fried scorn or fresh scorns, you’ll find some typos for scorn where people clearly meant scone, S-C-O-N-E.

And that obviously probably came to your mind already.

For sure.

We’ve always wondered if it was related to the word scone, but they’re so different, really.

And also, again, like they were pretty poor, so I don’t know that they would have even been familiar with scones back in those days.

But then maybe that’s how it started. They heard a word and misunderstood it.

Well, scones have about 500 years of history from Scotland.

And scones in the U.K. Are different from scones in the U.S.

They’re more like American biscuits.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah, I’m just wondering if someone in your family heard someone British talking about scones

And sort of assume that they were pronouncing a word that had an R in it?

You know, it could be.

And my mom’s family, now they come from Boston.

So I guess there’s a pretty large Scotch-Irish population that would have been up there, right?

So it could be that.

I’m not sure.

I still would love to hear if any of your other listeners have ever heard of it.

That would be awesome.

Yeah, I would too.

Yeah, you’re doing our job for us, Kimberly.

We’ll put on the language sirens and the flashing cherries and see what we get in return when we put the word out, all right?

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

I love being on the show, but honestly, I’m so excited to be on the show, I’m more excited to find out about this word.

So I hope something turns up.

We do, too.

Stay tuned.

The blueberries and cherries are spinning and the sirens are going.

And if you know Kimberly’s word for fried biscuit dough, they call it scorns in her family.

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

Kimberly, if we find out more information, we will talk about it on the show and let you know.

That’s wonderful.

Thank you guys so much.

Have a great day.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Kimberly.

Bye-bye.

I do like what you said about the pronunciation because in parts of the UK and the US, a word like S-C-O-R-N,

The R wouldn’t be pronounced to be lack of roticity, and it would sound like scone.

And the word S-C-O-N-E is pronounced in part of the UK like scorn.

And so it might be a misunderstanding that kind of translated into people saying, oh, that’s corn.

Let us know. 877-929-9673.