Cornbread: Sweet or Savory?

Question

It is economics that's behind why northerners (generally) eat cornbread w/ sugar in the batter and southerners (generally) don't. 

In the South, cornbread was eaten as a bread with your meal and you used it to sop up juices. Cornbread was used for basic sanwiches and as a base to pour your beans & ham hocks or other stewed dishes on (crumbled on greenbeans etc) You do not want sweetened cornbread for this - I can tell you sweet cornbread will spoil a dish of pinto beans instantly - ugh.

White bread was called 'lightbread' and most people couldn't afford much of it in the depressed South; flour was far more costly than cornmeal. 
Biscuits on Sunday and rolls for Sunday dinner might use up the weekly budget for wheat flour. Of course those days are long gone now, thank God! 

I have a lot of Northern-type friends and they insist on sugar in cornbread. But then they aren't accustomed to eat the cornnbread mixed w/ their main meal. They eat it as muffins, a sweet cake, plain or with butter. 
I like sweet corn muffins just fine, but they are not the utilitarian Cornbread that is indespensible in Southern dining, to be used as a sop and an accompanyment to your main dishes. 

I have dicussed this w/ people from all over, and most have an opinion. I'm curious what Chowhounders will answer with regard to this.
Thanks : )

Answer

I was raised a "swamp yankee" from Rhode Island. We had Johnny Cakes while growing up. My father being a preacher we didn't have much money. I have never heard of sugar in cornbread. My Mom would make a thin corn batter, no sugar no salt and fry them in oil. When we had a "little extra" she would make corn bread with corn kernels, onions and a jalapeno in it. Corn bread was more prevalent in our home yet we have no southern roots, served on the side, on top or under our meal. Maybe it was because my Mom was the "original" Girl Scout and cornbread was easiest for camping.

Answer

I never had cornbread at all growing up. I spent almost 30 years in Indiana, and love the sweet cornbread I always had there. Now I live in Georgia, and my rural Georgian co-worker gives me her sweet cornbread, and I give her my dry crumbly cornbread when we get take-out meals.

She likes the Southern kind because she crumbles it into her buttermilk or into her greens, and that would just be icky with the sweet stuff.
I like the sweet kind with butter as a side, or even as a snack with tea.

Answer

No sugar !!!!!!

Answer

I think Marie Calender recipe calls for half recipe of corn bread and half of a yellow cake mix and mix the two. Hers is light and sweet, not heavy or dense and with a whipped butter and maybe some honey, yummm

Answer

I love cornbread and would not consider sugar.

Answer

The unsweetened southern cornbread may well have its roots among poor subsistence farmers who lived mainly on the corn they grew. But biscuits and sweet cakes are also part of southern cooking, so it is clear that wheat flour was available. But the flour we associate with the south is softer, more suitable to these items than yeast bread.

It would harder, I think, to trace the sweet half flour, half corn northern style back very far. In colonial New England, their corn 'bread' probably was closer to Rhode Island Johnny cakes. Reliable baking powder dates from the mid 1800s. There was active trade from the West Indies to New England, but sugar was mostly shipped in the form of molasses which could be turned into rum. That quintessential NE dessert, Indian pudding, is cornmeal sweetened with molasses.

I think you are right abut where cornbread fits in the current (and recent past) cuisines - more of 'bread' in the south, more of a side or breakfast/supper item in the north.

Answer

There's a place for both. I like a nice center-cut square of mildly sweet cornbread at Threadgills in Austin with the 5-vegetable platter because I dump a lot of Tabasco on the fried okra and creamed spinach. The signature jalapeno cornbread at the Hotel Boulderado in Colorado goes well with every Sunday brunch item.

Answer

Oh man, I caught holy hell for ever considering sugar (or gasp! creamed corn) in my cornbread shortly after I married my wife. In fairness, I was working from a recipe I found in a book, whereas she was working from an index card with her granny's recipe. These days, I'm sold on the savory variety, fried in an iron skillet, and laden with bacon drippings.

Answer

On other topics Food Timeline has proven to be a good summary of historical information. Here's its entry on cornbread
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq.html#cornbread

Answer

Hmmm. I'm from Texas, which I consider the south, and lots of people here eat sweet cornbread. I like savory and sweet. I like unsweetened cornbread with jalapeños and plain cornbread a little sweet. 

I don't know if any of you have tried this, but cornbread batter cooked up in a waffle iron is fantastic. I know it's not traditional, but it is fabulous.

Answer

I like the sweet vrs's the unsweet.

Answer

Possibly because southerners down their cornbread with sweetened ice tea and northerners go w/ unsweetened so they reverse the corn bread accordingly. ;-) Either way, I use both, depending on what I'm having with it. Nothing beats a good corn bread in bacon in a cast iron skillet but I won't give up my sweet Durgin Park cornbread that's more flour than cornmeal. If it's good, I'll eat it.

Answer

My parents are southern, but I have lived in New England for all of my adult life. I grew up eating the buttery, dry, crunchy southern cornbread (think Morrison's cafeterias) even though my parents moved to the west coast when I was about 9. My mother never used sugar and hardly used any flour in her cornbread at all. (buttermilk-cornmeal-egg, etc) Once in a while, she'd stir in some bacon.

The first time I tasted New England cornbread, I didn't even recognize it. I just thought it was a really salty yellow cake. I've grown to like it, however, but only for breakfast or a snack.

Answer

When it comes to the history of cornbread we are all amatures. Here's a pro:
http://www.amazon.com/Cornbread-Gospels-Crescent-Dragonwagon/dp/0761119167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292812884&sr=1-1
The Cornbread Gospels

and on Google bookshttp://books.google.com/books?id=3sdQ-MtWRMkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Answer

Traditional Southern cornbread is not sweet. There are variations that are sweet or have a sweet component. I prefer plain cornbread baked in a cast iron skillet or made into a batter and fried in a vegetable oil with a little bit of bacon fat..

Answer

Take it away, Mark Twain:

"For instance, the corn bread, the hot biscuits and wheatbread and the fried chicken. These things have never been properly cooked in the North — in fact, no one there is able to learn the art, so far as my experience goes. The North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it."

Answer

Boston Brown Bread is another example of a northern cornbread. Recipes usually call for equal parts whole wheat, rye, and corn (a type of 'thirded bread"), and is heavily flavored with molasses and raisins. It is steamed in a can. Until yesterday I've only had it in the commercially canned form.

Molasses and corn are the main ingredients in another NE classic, Indian pudding.

Answer

It was first introduced to me as sweet, as with pretty much all instances of cornbread you would find in Canada. I did, however, usually reduce the amount of sugar called for in recipes when making it at home. 

But it never occurred to me that cornbread can be made sugar-free too! (Although technically, there is still plenty of sweetness in the corn itself). After reading this thread, I will definitely make my first sugar-free cornbread very soon, which, IMO, is much more versatile. I can drench it in butter and maple syrup as a snack, or I can serve it as a side with dinner.

Answer

Cornbread for sandwiches?? I didn't think the texture of any cornbread would make it sandwich material. Now, there is a corn rye bread that would work, but it's not the same as the standard cornbread we're discuccing here.

Answer

Not to mention that sweet cornbread would not bode well in cornbread dressing, a Southern staple.

I've lived in Texas all my life, parents from Louisiana, and I never had sweet cornbread until Boston Market moved into the region! I like it, but I think of it more like the corn muffins you get in the northeast.

And, to satisfy the sweet tooth of us kids, my mother would - on occasion - make the Malt-O-Meal muffins from the recipe on the box!

Answer

Cornbread is one of the few things I can actually make, the same skillet recipe you see above, no sugar. When I was a poor student it was one of my luxuries, fresh cornbread.

Reading all this has made me realize I need to start making cornbread again.

Answer

UB did you post your corn bread recipe?

Answer

I grew up in Chicago, but my family is mostly from the South.

We ate cornbread with the main meals, not, as described in the OP, as a separate item. Sometimes 8-inch cake slices, sometimes muffins. Slathered with butter. Leftovers might be enjoyed as a separate snack, though.

Usually it was the Jiffy mix, so yes, pretty sweet. And usually baked in the oven. But occasionally baked in a skillet in the oven, or even a skillet on the stove top.

On rare occasions, it was made from scratch without sugar (johnny cakes). And as a kid I was always disgusted when my excitement over having cornbread, one of my favorite foods, was crushed on finding out that it was going to be a bland (ie not sweet) cornbread night.

I still much prefer sweet cornbread, although the level of sweetness can vary. I'm good with savory cornbread just so long as there is something else in it to make it tasty (grease, corn, cheese, smoky flavors, peppers).

Answer

Strictly savory, and with no whole kernels of corn in it. Jalapeno bits are entirely permissible. Said bread needs to be cooked in a cast-iron skillet, although cornbread cakes--in the fashion of a pancake--are also good.

Answer

Growing up in the Midwest, our family's notion of cornbread was either Jiffy mix or the recipe from the BH&G cookbook, which was more of the same. Sweet, sweet, sweet … Then in my 30s I moved to Nashville, and discovered REAL cornbread. Got a copy of "Miss Mary's Downhome Cooking", recipes from Mary Bobo's famed boarding house in Lynchburg, and there was her Skillet Cornbread with NO sugar and NO flour. My first variation on her recipe was to chop up a bunch of bacon into the skillet and put that in the oven while it was preheating. When the oven was hot and the bacon done, that and the fat got beat into the batter, batter poured into the skillet, skillet back into the oven and Bingo. Wow! I never looked back …

Answer

To me, if it's necessary to add sugar, then the batter ain't no damn good. A fair measure of bacon fat with lots of crispies, and a buttermilk for the liquid, along with a good grade of cornmeal, and there is no need for sugar.

Answer

I will leave a tiny bit of room for both - there is one soup I make that which isn't ruined by sweet cornbread muffins. They're almost good with it. ;)

But our way (Texan with Deep South roots) is no sugar, poured into just-shy-of-smoking bacon grease in a hot cast iron skillet. Halfway through the whole thing is flipped to brown the other side.

I've seen corn and jalapeno versions sold in restaurants, but consider those Not Cornbread, like you can make a stew and call it chili, it doesn't mean i "is." (Or as Ann Richards once quoted: "Just cuz the cat had kittens in the oven doesn't make 'em biscuits.")

Answer

Yes, I guess us "northerners" do like sweeter cornbread, but I just think it tastes better! Or I add shredded cheddar cheese to my bread- yum! I'll try it w/o sugar, or at least LESS sugar to see how it goes!

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Cornbread: Sweet or Savory?

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