This Old-School Southern Cake Was One Of Johnny Cash's Favorites

He was the Man in Black. A poster of him flipping the bird to the camera has graced dorm room walls for decades. For a while, he was the one country musician insecure music nerds were allowed to like. From his iconic performance at Folsom Prison to the stark, haunted "American" albums released towards the end of his life, Johnny Cash was a bona fide legend. But what, exactly, does a legend eat? As you might imagine, the Arkansas-born Cash had a taste for country cooking, with one of his favorite desserts being a curious confection called "scripture cake," which he often ate with fruit salad.

If you spend enough time on social media, you've probably heard someone say a particularly cursed phrase that "none of these words are in the Bible." Well, scripture cake solves that problem for you: It's a fruitcake made exclusively from ingredients that appear in the Bible. Butter, for instance, is mentioned in Judges 5:25. ("He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.") The fruit in this fruitcake comes from 1 Samuel 30:11-12, which mentions figs and raisins. The recipe was essentially designed as a puzzle for young girls in the South, testing both their Bible knowledge and their baking skills. Granted, they bend the rules a bit in some places — while Luke 13:21 does mention a leavening agent, it refers to yeast and not baking powder — but it's fascinating all the same.

Scripture cake and fruit salad weren't the only desserts Johnny Cash enjoyed. His mother, Carrie Cash, was famous for her pineapple pie, which appeared in a cookbook published after her son achieved country music stardom. Cash also had a taste for his mother's peanut butter cookies, and liked peanut butter (a uniquely American food) in general. His son, John Carter Cash, said in a Reddit AMA that his father preferred crunchy peanut butter.

Cash didn't just have a sweet tooth, though. In that same Reddit AMA, Carter Cash said that his dad liked fried catfish and chicken skin when it came to more savory options. He loved chili, too, which made a memorable appearance in the episode of "Columbo" he guest-starred in. (Yes, Johnny Cash was the murderer on an episode of "Columbo.") And for breakfast, he often turned to fried bologna with eggs and biscuits. If you're looking to try some of his favorite foods, there are all sorts of cookbooks associated with the Carter Cash family, ready for you to try.