Cornbread is part of our Carolina culture

Cornbread occupies a special seat at the kitchen table of Southern eating, but the debate continues about whether to add sugar to the mix.

The discussion can stir up some good “hot stove league” dialogue among chefs, cooks and general foodies.

One who became emotional about it was the late Lewis Grizzard (shown below), the Atlanta-based humorist and author. He once wrote: “If you want something sweet, order the pound cake. Anybody who puts sugar in the cornbread is a heathen who doesn’t love the Lord, not to mention (southern college) football.”

 

Kathleen Purvis, food editor at The Charlotte Observer, has dug into the “sweet v. unsweet” cornbread debate.

Purvis interviewed Ronni Lundy of Burnsville, N.C. (shown below), an expert on Appalachian cooking history. Lundy sat on the same pew as Grizzard. She commented: “If God had meant cornbread to have sugar, he would have made it cake.”

 

“We don’t put sugar or flour in our cornbread in the mountain South because those were things we’d have to buy, or we’d have to be ‘beholdened’ to someone for. Your ‘daily bread’ was things you could grow yourself,” Lundy remarked.

On the other hand, Purvis caught up with a pro-sugar advocate La’Wan Adams, owner of La’Wan’s Soul Food Restaurant in Charlotte. “You have to have sugar in your tea and your cornbread,” she said.

Pastry chef Simone Faure (shown below), who grew up in Louisiana, claims that southern cornbread is meant to be sweet.

“Grandma Bernice’s cornbread was magical,” Faure said. “She would combine the brightest yellow cornmeal (delivered to her front door on the back of a fresh seafood truck) and the softest flour with eggs, sugar, milk, baking powder and bacon grease, which she kept in a metal tin on top of the oven. She never measured anything and mixed every bit with her bare hands.”

The “sweet or savory” cornbread question was put before the test kitchen staff at Southern Living magazine awhile back. The verdict: “The cornbread we consider our best, includes fine yellow cornmeal, butter and a touch of sugar. Yes, just a touch.”

Food writer Haley Laurence of Lexington, Ala., took exception: “Unsweet cornbread tastes better in milk. There’s no better snack than cornbread and milk. Crumple up cornbread and pour it in your glass of milk…and you have a delicious meal. It’s never quite as scrumptious with sugared cornbread.”

 

Editors at The Spruce Eats, an online source for food news and views, have critiqued store-bought cornbread mixes, and Donna Currie wrote that the “best overall” award goes to “Jiffy.”

Jiffy is marketed by the Chelsea (Mich.) Milling Company and was established in 1930 by Mabel White Holmes. She said her mix made baking “so easy even a man could do it.” Indeed, Currie said, “Jiffy’s not too sweet, not too savory, and it’s simple to make using just milk and egg.”

The company remains a family-owned business. Mabel’s grandson, Howdy Holmes, a former Indianapolis 500 race car driver, is board chair, while great-grandson, Howard S. Holmes II, is the current president.

 

Chosen as the premier “southern cornbread mix” was “Krusteaz Southern Cornbread and Muffin Mix,” created in 1932 by Ada Rose Gilbreath Charters of Seattle, Wash. She set out to perfect an easy-to-prepare pie crust. She called her product Krusteaz (cleverly combining “crust” and “ease”). 

Currie said: “Krusteaz Southern Cornbread is a little bit dense and slightly gritty rather than fluffy. While it’s slightly sweet, it’s not overly sweet.”

What do you put with your cornbread? Listen to “Beans and Corn Bread,” a 1949 jump blues song by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five.