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oven noun A heavy, cast-iron pot usually having three legs and a close-fitting lid, set over burning coals in the front of the fireplace, partially submerged in coals, or having coals piled on top; it is used most often to bake cornbread. The vessel was widely used before the introduction of stoves. [DARE labels this usage “chiefly South, South Midland”]

1862 Robinson CW Letters (n.d.) the old lady give me apeck of Beans fur that & I went back to the camp & got a big oven & cook them that evning. 1937 Hall Coll (Cosby Creek TN) = [it] had a cover and legs and was set among the hot coals. 1958 Wood Words from TN 13 = a covered iron vessel: “A cast iron oven about 14 inches in diameter, 3 inches deep with legs about 1½ inches long and ears for pothooks, and a cast lid with a turned up rim and [a] loop on top to lift by…Put the lid and cover it with live coals.” Known to the older generation; oven bread = a kind of corn bread: “Oven bread [was in c1890] corn bread baked in an iron vessel complete with lid and legs ... in hot coals before open fireplaces.” 1984 GSMNP-153:21 In the wintertime mama would bake this cornbread in a oven, in the fire place, and I can remember that so well.