Cornbread - Sweet or Salty

donbosco

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Thoughts on Cornbread. When my Momma and Deddy were running #BonleeHardware (which they did from 1940 until 1983 when I was 25), they never ate ‘dinner’ (lunch to Northerners) together Monday through Saturday since they also ran the Post Office and one of them needed to be attending the public there 9 to 5.

My Momma would go first, running up to the house (you could see it from the store) to get dinner together for herself and Deddy. Momma got a longer ‘break’ if you want to call it that because she laid out the food. Some days she made cornbread. Time was short to down dinner and what I remember being offered were pintos and peas and green beans galore with tomatoes and cucumbers and cantaloupe added in during the warmer months. But cornbread was, at least to me, the literal centerpiece of the meal. I was a kid and all those vegetables could be a bit too green for me. I admit to PB&J sandwiches fairly often. Just the same I remember dinner. And I did love the crunchy cornbread that my Momma made. It was almost burned frankly -- she always did struggle with minding the oven. At dinner in the middle of the table there always sat a deep-brown crusted ‘shape-of-a-cast-iron-skillet’ upside-down plate of cornbread with a soft-soft kitchen cloth draped over it.

Cornbread keeps well and sometimes it was the day-before’s crusty round but other days it was fresh and hot. From 12 I worked regularly in the store during summers, holidays, and after school - my parents weren’t mean about it and I have too many memories of goofing off for my ‘shifts’ to have been that strictly prescribed but there was a routine and ‘going up to the house’ for dinner was a major part of it. During my teen years Pearly Marsh often worked at the house a few hours a day and she was usually there for dinner too.

I never really knew what Pearly’s schedule was, but I was never surprised to see her around. She did laundry and cleaned the house. I usually ate my dinner with her. Momma and Deddy ate theirs quickly and alone so they could get back to the store. They worked hard and their days were timed out strictly with the dinner break often barely squeezed in.

And that brings us back to cornbread. In a renowned 2017 ‘Charlotte Observer’ article Kathleen Purvis wrote about cornbread and race in The South. According to Purvis, as well as the well-known African American chef and food historian, Michael Twitty, Black and White people in the region ate/eat different cornbread. See here: https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article68763427.html The thesis of the Purvis piece and the assertion of Twitty and other researchers and observers is that from the originating recipes themselves that Whites eat cornbread with a savory lean and Black people eat it sweet.

My Momma’s cornbread was close to salty. There was nothing the slightest bit sweet about it. In a nod toward his sweet tooth my Deddy’s own splurge was pouring molasses over it. I remember even then thinking that was odd since as a boy he had lost the fingers of his left hand in a sorghum mill mishap. I preferred plain old butter on my wedge. According to the Southern Kitchen Lore of Purvis and Twitty, Pearly, who was African American, may very likely have thought my Momma made her cornbread wrong.

Corn is the most American plant of all I’d argue. It is a gift from American Indians as is cornbread itself. Africans and Europeans adopted and adapted the grain in the years after the invasion, embracing it in multiple forms. In current times, the thick, smallish round corn tortillas from Guatemala that I have grown to love through my years spent there are increasingly part of the cuisine of The South And #DeepChatham. I once brought home to #Bonlee some tamales that I had bought in #SilerCity and Deddy was brave enough to try one after some coaxing. He tasted, and I saw him pause and ponder — I suspect now that he was recollecting his youth during the Great Depression on a struggling #SandyBranch tobacco farm and a table where corn was the staff of life. Savoring the masa of that foreign corn delight, he held it up, looked over at me and spoke just three words, “Poor folks food.” He finished his tamale.

Very near our apartment in #WestHarlem are two good cornbread spots - the first, a BBQ joint called Dinosaur that cooks with hickory that I can literally smell as it wafts up from the riverside and the second, Charles’ Fried Chicken (I met Charles - he’s from outside Charlotte, NC - a Tar Heel), both serve the sweet kind. Dinosaur isn’t southern but they keep some skin IN their pork ‘que and mustard OUT so it’s a good influence and Charles’ has fine chicken and solid sides - the cornbread in those places harkens homeward.

There are a lot of ways to eat corn - sweet, salty, ground up, creamed, on the cob, roasted, chips, tortillas, and flaked but it does seem to bind us historically and moving forward may it bind more than divide.

 
I love ‘em both. They’re just different things that don’t need to be compared with each other. The world is a better place with both sweet and salty cornbread.
I do not begrudge the existence of sweet cake cornbread or criticize those who enjoy it, just have a deep, learned preference for the way I ate it as a kid and made it as a teen once that job passed to me as part of meal prep.

When I was a kid, my maternal grandmother sometimes complained about how the Italians (pronounced EYE-talians) in the coal mining town in WVa where she lived wasted their cornmeal in lean times making what I though she called “sponge pudding”. Only when I was an adult did it occur to me she was probably talking about polenta.
 
I do not begrudge the existence of sweet cake cornbread or criticize those who enjoy it, just have a deep, learned preference for the way I ate it as a kid and made it as a teen once that job passed to me as part of meal prep.

When I was a kid, my maternal grandmother sometimes complained about how the Italians (pronounced EYE-talians) in the coal mining town in WVa where she lived wasted their cornmeal in lean times making what I though she called “sponge pudding”. Only when I was an adult did it occur to me she was probably talking about polenta.
I hear you. That’s what I grew up with too and I love it. My dad ate it with cane syrup, so that combo hits me even closer to my core. But every time I go to Mert’s, I come away thinking sweet cornbread is also pretty dang close to God.
 
"When I die - bury me deep - put a jar of molasses at my feet - put a piece of cornbread in my hand - and I'll sop my way to the promised land."
 
When I was growing up, I didn't know about cornbread baked in an oven. I had never had it. At BBQ restaurants, I had hushpuppies, but those were entirely different from cornbread. What I grew up calling cornbread is what I believe is more commonly called "Johnny Cakes." We would mix up the batter, put some bacon grease in the frying pan, and once the bacon grease was melted and hot, we would spoon in the corn bread (Johnny Cake?) batter into the frying pan, sort of like pancakes, flipping them only once. This sort of cornbread was a tad thicker than a pancake, but was even better. I can distinctly remember the first time I was in a restaurant was served baked cornbread and my father had to explain to me what it was. It was good, but not as good as fried cornbread.
 
On a recent golf trip some of the guys liked the diner cornbread so much they asked for a glass of milk and crumbled the cornbread into the milk. I had not tried that and they said their mom would do it with the stale cornbread and they fell in love with it. I still haven't tried it yet.
 
On a recent golf trip some of the guys liked the diner cornbread so much they asked for a glass of milk and crumbled the cornbread into the milk. I had not tried that and they said their mom would do it with the stale cornbread and they fell in love with it. I still haven't tried it yet.
Cornbread and milk was a common thing growing up in our house. We also added some chopped raw onion to the mix. We also ate cornbread with King Syrup (below, which was always in our cupboard, rather than molasses.)

But we had biscuits more often than cornbread. My mother went. back to work when I started first grade, but before that she regularly made scratch biscuits every day except when she made a "cake" of cornbread. And it was always salty, not sweet. "Cake" describes the shape (upside down from a cast iron skillet rather than the less frequently-made corn muffins.)

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I can go either way. My mother always used Red Band flour to make her salty cornbread. I loved it hot with butter or crumbled up in a glass of milk and then eaten with a spoon. It's never been the same since Red Band is no more.

I also enjoy me some sweet cornbread (or sweet heat with diced jalapenos in it), especially with homemade chili.
 
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Corn is the most American plant of all I’d argue.
Usually, I just skim through a thread like this, as I rarely have anything to contribute and I can't identify with any of the stories. But I'd like to interject a comment here.

Why are WE talking about who or what is the real America? That's what you're arguing. You can live for a decade in NYC, living and eating well, without really coming across corn at all. The taquerias use flour tortillas, in my experience. Italian restaurants maybe have polenta, maybe not, but nobody goes to a restaurant because of its great polenta. NYC is just as American as NC.

In the Northwest, corn is not a thing. Or at least that's what my mom, who was born and raised in Seattle told me. She didn't really eat corn until she went to college in the Midwest. And yet WA is just as American as NC.

Maybe we don't need to figure out which is "the most American plant of all" (if there is one, surely the distinction would go to Cannabacae, which is consumed everywhere in the country)?
 
We never ate lunch. Breakfast, dinner, and supper. When you came home from church you ate Sunday dinner, then later you had leftovers for supper.

Lunch was what you ate at school, a midday meal at home was dinner. The evening meal was supper.
 
We never ate lunch. Breakfast, dinner, and supper. When you came home from church you ate Sunday dinner, then later you had leftovers for supper.

Lunch was what you ate at school, a midday meal at home was dinner. The evening meal was supper.

Yep . . same here.

I do like all cornbread recipes, but, I prefer cornbread to corncake.
 
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