Cornbread is a quick bread jiffy buttermilk biscuit mix with cornmeal, associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States, with origins in Native American cuisine. Europeans arrived in the New World.
Although Native people in the Americas first cultivated corn, it was introduced in West Africa by European traders shortly after contact through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and quickly became a major staple in African cooking. In its earliest developments in the American colonies, cornbread was a simple combination of ground cornmeal and water that was then stirred together and baked over an open fire or in a hearth. At this point in its history, cornbread’s role in Southern cuisine emerged out of necessity. Cornbread is a popular item in Southern cooking and is enjoyed by many people for its texture and aroma. Steamed cornbread is mushy, chewier, and more like cornmeal pudding than what most consider to be traditional cornbread. Cornbread can also be baked into corn cakes.
Cornbread is a common bread in United States cuisine, particularly associated with the South and Southwest, as well as being a traditional staple for populations where wheat flour was more expensive. Cornbread, especially leftovers, can be eaten as a breakfast. In the United States, northern and southern cornbread are different because they generally use different types of corn meal and varying degrees of sugar and eggs. Southern cornbread traditionally used white cornmeal and buttermilk. Pan-baked Southern-style cornbread, made with yellow cornmeal. United States, especially in the South. A slightly different variety, cooked in a simple baking dish, is associated with northern U.
The batter for northern-style cornbread is very similar to and sometimes interchangeable with that of a corn muffin. A primarily Southern dish consisting of cornbread with pork cracklings inside. It can be prepared with any method but a skillet is most common as it allows for making the cornbread crispier. This pejorative term often is directed at persons from rural areas of the Southern and Midwestern United States. Pouring a batter similar to that of skillet-fried cornbread, but slightly thinner, into hot grease atop a griddle or a skillet produces a pancake-like bread called a johnnycake. While johnnycake often denotes this pancake-like cornbread, it is also used in a scattered sense as a more general term for cornbread, chiefly in the North. A thicker buttermilk-based batter that is deep-fried rather than pan-fried forms the hushpuppy, a common accompaniment to fried fish and other seafood in the South.
Hushpuppy recipes vary from state to state, some including onion seasoning, chopped onions, beer, or jalapeños. Alongside other iterations of Native cornbread, the Lumbee people in southeastern North Carolina have a unique method of cooking their cornbread. Lumbee families serve with meals differs from both hushpuppies and johnnycakes. Prepared with yellow cornmeal, egg, buttermilk, and salt, the cornbread batter is thinly poured into a cast-iron skillet to fry. New York State Museum Annual Report. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Vol.
The University of North Carolina Press. Native American Contributions to African American Foodways: Slavery, Colonialism, and Cuisine”. A People’s History of Cornbread Stuffing”. The Real Reason Sugar Has No Place in Cornbread”. Brookline, MA: America’s Test Kitchen, 2004, ISBN 0-936184-75-2.
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, pub. As We Cooked, We Lived: Lumbee Foodways”. This article is about the food. For the Irish style bread, see Soda bread.