Philpy, a rice bread unique to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, can be traced back to eighteenth-century plantation culture and is a first cousin to cornbread and johnnycakes. I know nothing about the origins of the name. Recipes today are found in only the most obscure regional cookbooks, and I became familiar with the bread only when my friend “Hoppin’” John Taylor (the major spokesman for Lowcountry cookery) introduced it to my mother and me about fifteen years ago, when we were visiting him in Charleston. John makes his philpy the old-fashioned way, in a cast-iron skillet, but the more I tinkered with and modernized the bread, the more inclined I was to bake it in loaves that could be sliced more easily. Either way, the bread is delicious slathered with plenty of butter.