Hominy Grits

Appears in
Taste the State: Signature Foods of South Carolina and Their Stories
Taste the State

By Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields

Published 2021

  • About

We need to understand a few terms: big hominy, small hominy, and hominy grits—or grits. Grits are so Carolina that they were called “Carolina Grits” or “Charleston Grits” in other parts of the South in the antebellum era. The ad below appeared in the December 28, 1853, issue of the Alexandria Gazette:

Charlestown grits, or, small hominy, just received, in store, and for sale by [dec 23] John A. Dixon

Grits scrambles the spelling of “grist,” “what you get when a grain that has gone through a coarse grind in a mill.” The advertisement gives a second name: small hominy. Small hominy differed from big hominy, or plain hominy— what is now called posole.