My southern relatives and I at times argue about the authenticity of foods like “Sweat Tea” (gag me), and vinegar pork barbecue (horrendous). Now we have something else to fight about; sugar in cornbread. I cannot stand skillet cornbread that feels and tastes like cake. Yet, I do prefer a bit of sweetness in cornbread, just as my mother has made it (with sour milk occasionally) for sixty-years. I ran across this fun story that appeared in a N. Carolina newspaper.
Corn bread has no sugar. Corn muffins have sugar. The texture is very different between the two.
I made a horrible mistake of using muffin mix for my cornbread dressing one year–it was terrible!
I am not a person who enjoys cooking. My sister is the one keeping the family recipes going. I think our cornbread dressing is not sweetened and our sides of cornbread are. Most of the recipes come from the Florida swamps side of the family which left Georgia in the late 1880s.
I like a little sweetness in my cornbread, and it must be cooked in a cast iron pan until the edges brown.
Interestingly, the cornbread served at the American Indian Museum in DC is very dense and has no sugar. It’s terrible! Feels authentic though. I wonder where they get their corn meal from.
I like cornbread a little sweet. I was raised in a southern state and all of my relatives are from the south or the lower midwest. So even though I live in Manhattan now, I put sugar in everything. Now even my little Manhattanite kids are partial to sweet tea and pulled pork.
Cornbread is not a traditional food in my family (my parents are from Boston and OH). I grew up in the DC area. The only cornbread I’ve eaten around here has always been a little sweet, some more sweet than others. I rarely make it but when I have, I’ve always added sugar.
I looked at the cornbread recipe over at the King Arthur site. They are an excellent source for bread recipes.
It said, “This cornbread is a rare compromise between Southern and Northern cornbreads: it’s “just right,” as far as the amount of sugar” So sweet cornbread is a southern thing.
IME southerners like sweet foods. I had stewed tomatoes in the south and they were very sweet. Not only did they add sweet cornbread to the tomatoes buy also additional sugar.
Southerners do like sweet foods, but normally when you see Southern-style cornbread recipes, they have little sugar (and often no flour either), whereas Northern-style cornbread is cakier, with more sugar and flour.
I get my vinegar Carolina sauce from Whole Hog Cafe because I can do it mail order. Can’t get it otherwise up here.
That is the kind of sauce I grew up with. We would get it from a little place in the Ocala area that had been influenced by people moving down from the Carolinas.
Born and raised in the south and never had sweet cornbread until I was adult. My Mom and relatives did not put sugar in it or in any vegetables (I have heard of that as well)
However -I try not to yuck on someone else’s yum.
I should have read the link in the first post before I posted. But now I have-- I had no idea that there was a racial divide among Southerners about whether cornbread ought to be sweetened.
I had no idea there was a “divide” either! I grew up in NC and my mom made non-sweet white cornbread often and I loved it. But now, alas, I actually prefer Jiffy corn muffins.
I hate my Alabama family’s southern cornbread. It is buttery, crispy, salty and dry. Normally, I love these things, but not in cornbread. Their recipe contains no flour, so if you’re gluten free, there is that, at least. But I prefer New England cornbread, which is soft and contains both sugar and white flour in addition to the cornmeal.
@veruca, that’s the cornbread I know and dislike! My mother would never consider putting sugar or white flour in the cornbread. It’s just cornmeal, an egg, buttermilk, salt, baking powder and cooked in a very buttery cast iron skillet. But it is authentic for its region and does make a decent stuffing.
@greenwitch I think I have a cookbook from the NA museum being cookbook obsessed. I’ve seen a lot of corn bread recipes here. I don’t use Jiffy. I use stone ground corn meal. I bet they do too. Probably the closest thing to their traditional ingredients. http://www.kenyonsgristmill.com/home.html
Well, I love vinegar bbq sauce. Gotta have that pucker, make me dance a little.
So, Snowball CIty, #4 isn’t too hickory? Or too smokey? I’ve searched in vain for a good recipe. Thought I’d have to drive down to East Carolina for a fix and a 6-pack, ha.
As for cornbread, I do like the softer, a little sweet, with a little crunch from coarse corn meal, and doesn’t fall apart when you pick it up. (Pleae don’t anyone tell me you eat it with a fork.)
There are a lot of “north-south” cultural differences.
Went to Boston years back and couldn’t have ice tea because it was “out of season”. Had to order hot tea and a glass of ice. And no, we had to ask the waiter for both. He couldn’t fathom it.
An order of “grits” (on the menu) was interpreted as “cream of wheat”. They really thought it was the same.
I can easily see where corn bread, muffins, etc are all thrown together under one definition.
BBQ sauces are VERY regional. That’s one aspect that makes them fun to try out when you travel.
Vinegar, sweet, hot, spicy and the combo.
No matter how hard the national brands try to match tastes that most people like they just can’t really match regional differences from Texas, NC, Fl, Kentucky, TN (and everyone else). Everybody has their own (at least they used to).