[Sca-cooks] re:cornbread

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 2, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Marcha wrote:

> Cornbread mix/ (she asks with a derisive wave of her fan.) My  
> Grandmoms are both standing on their heads in their graves rights  
> now.  Bertha

Okay, so, for the edification of the heathen among us, maybe we need  
to discuss Die Echte Cornbread. I know most people who feel really  
strongly about it seem to feel that only psychotic Yankees would add  
sugar or molasses to cornbread (my personal feeling is that molasses  
should be made into rum or thrown away), and then there's the school  
that says it should not be made with yellow cornmeal.

Still, there seems to be a pretty enormous variety of styles.

My childhood memories of cornbread (bearing in mind that I don't come  
from a region where cornbread is especially indigenous) are of  
unsweetened, yellow cornbread, made rather shallow in a cake pan. It  
probably would have contained a mixture of flour and cornmeal, salt,  
butter, oil or some sort of shortening, an egg or two, baking powder,  
and a little milk (sour, if there was such a thing on hand).

I'm sure there's plenty of sacrilege there, but due to a no-doubt- 
improper upbringing, I don't know what it is. I probably use a higher  
proportion of cornmeal to wheat flour than my mom did, and I often  
use lard as a shortening, and bake it in an actual loaf pan, but  
otherwise it's pretty similar to what I grew up with...

Is my cornbread damnation inevitable, or can my soul be saved at this  
late date?

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04