With him, it is literally a word and a blow, and, in most cases, the blow comes first.
As a general rule, slaves do not come to the quarters for either breakfast or dinner, but take their "ash cake" with them, and eat it in the field.

This was so on the home plantation; probably, because the distance from the quarter to the field, was sometimes two, and even three miles.
The dinner of the slaves consisted of a huge piece of ash cake, and a small piece of pork, or two salt herrings.

Not having ovens, nor any suitable cooking utensils, the slaves mixed their meal with a little water, to such thickness that a spoon would stand erect in it; and, after the wood had burned away to coals and ashes, they would place the dough between oak leaves and lay it carefully in the ashes, completely covering it; hence, the bread is called ash cake.

The surface of this peculiar bread is covered with ashes, to the depth of a sixteenth part of an inch, and the ashes, certainly, do not make it very grateful to the teeth, nor render it very palatable.

The bran, or coarse part of the meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the bread.{81} This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves.