Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Mississippi Traditional Cornbread Recipe

Made a pan of corn bread last night to go with the chili.

I usually halve the recipe and bake it I an 8" CI skillet. I forgot to halve the milk, so added ingredients to make a full batch. Into a preheated 10" CI. Lots of leftover cornbread now!

Never had any cornbread without sugar that I thought was good.

On "Food Facts and Fiction" last night, they explored cornbread. One fascinating bit of lore was that in the South, cornbread was made with white cornmeal. White corn is naturally sweet and therefore Southern cornbread was also. White cornmeal also gives a slightly "cakier" texture.

But in the North, they raised yellow corn, which is not as sweet. To make up the taste difference, they had to add sugar - and to mimic the texture, they also had to add some wheat flour.

To this day, that's the root of the "sugar or not" in cornbread feud. White cornbread doesn't need it, but yellow cornbread does.

Made up a pan of Jiffy Mix cornbread last night. (It's a yellow cornmeal with sugar mix!) This morning, had a bowl of leftover cornbread with hot milk for breakfast. Didn't have any buttermilk on hand, so I had to resort to 2% but it was still great.

...

How did Civil war folks know when the oven hit 450*?

I like the soft, heavy sweet cornbread.

Webster, Darla and Tex,
Web, what is the name of that Catfish joint just out of Minden on Dor’Cheet Bayou? Good friend of mine from there. That’s some of the best fish I ever ate
Darla/Tex, Did you ever eat at the Cross Lake Inn there just out of Shreveport? Great fish but really great entertainment from the tuxedoed waiters with their singing. Also, what was the name of that fish joint north of Bossier City? Seemed like it was also on the river or bayouor so was last I was there. Damn I’m gettin old.

As to white or yellow cornmeal I believe they used what they could get. Especially in the days of reconstruction.

J. Frank Dobie in his book "A Vaquero of the Brush Country" which was basically the dictated memoirs of Cowboy and Brand inspector Thomas Young.

Young stated that he was a older teenager before he ever saw white bread (wheat flour). And that was on a ranch he was employed on in the vicinity of Copano bay (1870’s). Along the Texas coast. He went on to say that all they had growing up for bread was "yeller" bread. They had their corn milled over where he was from in Caldwell county on Plum creek. (Lockhart Texas area).

Another interesting tidbit was that when they needed milk he has to go find a feral, wet longhorn cow (with calf) and rope her. And drag her to their pen.
Apparently, the milking was an olympic feat in it’s own right. He stated this was common practice In civil war era central Texas. And he noted that you had to be careful as not to "kill the calf with the butter dasher". In other words milk the cow dry and not leave any for the calf. Longhorns were no Jersey or Holstein when it came to milk production! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Bob, maybe Blue will chime in here, but I remember Him telling about on the old water troughs, by a windmill, and they built the trough while digging the well and there was no water until they finished the well. They roped cows and milked them to mix the concrete with. Some of the History on that South Texas Ranch. miles

Yes! I was setting next to you on the gun truck when he told us this! And that he thought this was either late 1790’s, early 1800’s!!!! And that the ranch employed a man and his wife there to maintain the windlass to pump the water. Im sure they employed a beast of burden for this task and it was their job to assure they trough was always full! They apparently lived in a jacal there by the well. Damn interesting stuff.

Much of the mortar used at mission San Antonio de Valero was mixed with ewes milk. It was a common practice.

I found some white kern meal the other day.

Damn near under the counter stuff.

Hogwild,

Cornbread in Dixie that includes sugar is popularly called: Yankee Cornbread.
(In the river bottoms/swamp-country that I think of as "back home", it's served with butter & LOTS of ribbon-cane syrup & it's for dessert.)

Lots of us "ignorant hillbillies", "rural nobodies from flyover country" & "deplorables" as the DIMocRATS call us don't know any better than that, I'd guess.

One of my favorite "cradle foods" is crumbled-up cold cornbread, with buttermilk or sweet milk poured over it & flavored with pepper & salt.
(The first time that my "Spokane, WA-raised Darla" saw me making that "dish", she looked at as if I was from outer space. = She's polite enough to not openly question if I've completely lost my mind but I suspect that she thinks that I have.)

yours, tex

ribbon cane syrup??

Google get turned off in montanny?

ribbon cane syrup

Never heard of such a thing.

Up here we have ketchup and Log Cabin syrup.

Some confusion somewhere, which I attempted to fix, in red. To me molasses is made from Sorhgum cane and the cane syrup is from sugar cane. Both made from boiled down cane juice, just from different kind of cane. Black Strap molasses is the by product of making sugar and is used a lot in cattle feed. miles

Jim Conrad,

I'm sorry to hear that your area is deprived of good syrup.
(When I "go home" to Northeast TX, I routinely buy 5 pound cans of ribbon-cane syrup from a farmer's market in Morris County. = Most ribbon cane syrup is made of cane that is raised, processed, "cooked down" upon the small farms & "canned" by the farm families.)

yours, tex

Steen’s Cane Syrup...straight out of Louisiana. About the best I’ve ever eaten.