Yes, there are regional differences. Vive la difference! Otherwise we'd be eating a diet as predictable as McDonald's. If anyone would like to try an authentic Southern (i.e., non-sweet) version of cornbread, this recipe I posted a while back is my favorite version. I will grant a point to those who use 'adulterants' (grin) like sugar and flour: unless the quality of the corn meal is very good, cornbread made with just corn meal can be bitter. Meal can go rancid and stale pretty quickly. But cornbread made with fresh cornmeal, preferably stone-ground locally, is plenty sweet on its own. I generally only buy small quantities of cornmeal--just enough to make whatever recipe I'm making, and I buy it at a store that seems to have a good turnover of product. (That means not buying it at a gourmet store. No telling how long that stuff has been on the shelf.) Fortunately in my area of South Carolina there are a few grist mills not too far away that supply the local stores. Bernard Clayton's 'New Complete Book of Breads' actually has a listing for 2 different breads. One he calls "Yankee Corn Bread" (sugar, flour, yellow corn meal) and the other is Southern Corn Bread (white corn meal, no sugar or flour.) I find, though, that the freshness of the meal is more important than whether it's white or yellow. For those with access to good fresh meal I recommend this recipe from Clayton: Southern Corn Bread 2 eggs, room temp 2 cups buttermilk, room temp 1 tsp baking soda 2 cups white cornmeal (but yellow is okay, too) 1 1/2 tsp salt Preheat oven and baking utensil (skillet or 9 x 9 pan) to 450 while mixing batter. In a small bowl beat the eggs and mix in the buttermilk. In a mixer bowl, mix the baking soda, cornmeal and salt. Pour in the egg-buttermilk mixture and mix well until smooth. Pour batter into the preheated pan, return to oven for 20 to 25 minutes. It's done when a knife inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean & dry. I use this recipe when I make cornbread dressing for Thanksgiving; a quadruple recipe just barely fits into a 5 quart KitchenAid mixer bowl, and into an 11 x 14 pan. Absolutely delicious. This is what you use to soak up the pot juices from cooking black-eyed peas or greens. I always called those juices 'pot liquor' but my wife wondered what the heck I was talking about when I used that term. I guess that's southern as well.

I posted this a while back; regular readers, please forgive the repetition. You have touched on a topic which people will debate with theological zeal, i.e., should corn bread have sugar and/or flour. The farther removed from the Deep South you are, the more acceptable such 'adulterants' (grin) become. I will grant a point to those who use sugar and flour: unless the quality of the corn meal is very good, cornbread made with just corn meal can be bitter. Meal can go rancid and stale pretty quickly. But cornbread made with fresh cornmeal, preferably stone-ground locally, is plenty sweet on its own. I generally only buy small quantities of cornmeal--just enough to make whatever recipe I'm making, and I buy it at a store that seems to have a good turnover of product. (That means not buying it at a gourmet store. No telling how long that stuff has been on the shelf.) Fortunately in my area of South Carolina there are a few grist mills not too far away that supply the local stores. Bernard Clayton's 'New Complete Book of Breads' actually has a listing for 2 different breads. One he calls "Yankee Corn Bread" (sugar, flour, yellow corn meal) and the other is Southern Corn Bread (white corn meal, no sugar or flour.) I find, though, that the freshness of the meal is more important than whether it's white or yellow. For those with access to good fresh meal I recommend this recipe for Southern Corn Bread, from Clayton (it's pretty similar to Jimster's prior post): 2 eggs, room temp 2 cups buttermilk, room temp 1 tsp baking soda 2 cups white cornmeal (but yellow is okay, too) 1 1/2 tsp salt Preheat oven and baking utensil (skillet or 9 x 9 pan) to 450 while mixing batter. In a small bowl beat the eggs and mix in the buttermilk. In a mixer bowl, mix the baking soda, cornmeal and salt. Pour in the egg-buttermilk mixture and mix well until smooth. Pour batter into the preheated pan, return to oven for 20 to 25 minutes. It's done when a knife inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean & dry. I use this recipe when I make cornbread dressing for Thanksgiving; a quadruple recipe just barely fits into a 5 quart KitchenAid mixer bowl, and into an 11 x 14 pan. Absolutely delicious. This is what you use to soak up the pot juices from cooking black-eyed peas or greens. I always called those juices 'pot liquor' but my wife wondered what the heck I was talking about when I used that term. I guess that's southern as well. If I seem to go on & on, please forgive me: I'm on Atkins and can't have any cornbread right now. When I lose another 20 pounds, though, I'm going on a carbo bender which will most definitely include a batch of this cornbread.

The first hospital that I ever worked in was a small one in the downtown of my smallish hometown. Every Thursday the same thing was served for lunch in the cafeteria -- soup beans and cornbread -- and every Thursday the cafeteria would be packed with people coming from all the offices and shops for lunch. My mother's split pea soup is something I think of when the weather starts to get chilly, and my grandmother's green beans and chicken'n'dumplings. Cornbread was usually eaten with chili (Cincinnati style) at my house. Apples are something else that I associate with childhood. Although we had a couple of apple trees on our property, they were Red Delicious which none of us particularly cared for. My parents would take us all out to a local orchard and select 2 or 3 different varieties - Winesap for one, always my favorite- and buy a couple bushels to keep in the cold storage room over the winter. Mom would make applesauce and pies from the supply and we of course ate them out of hand. I still drive nearly an hour away to the only orchard that I know of that has Wealthy apples, to get some for my pies.

Don't take it too literally. Of course I mean that it is "wrong" in a tongue in cheek manner, of course. To me, it IS the worst thing to do to a pan of real cornbread to make it sweet. . It may not be to others. Once you have added sugar to the cornbread, you no longer have a. cornbread that goes with the meal. How do you eat cornbread and beans? You cut open that piece of cornbread and pour a ladle full of beans over it. I grew up on cornbread and beans. It was our mainstay meal. My mom used to make deviled eggs to serve with it. That is not a regional preference, just what mom liked. I keep cornbread around and chunk off a piece and warm it in a skillet. Then I use the still warm skillet and pour in some beans to heat up. A bit of Tabasco or hot vinegar over the top and it is a little bit of heaven that I never tire of. Some of those mills scattered down I95 through the Carolinas make some wonderful cornmeal. It was sold in the Publix, of all places, but the last time I was in Florida at a Publix I could not find it. Good meal does make a difference. If I can't find one of the ones out of the Carolinas from the small mills, I will go for Indian Head. White and yellow are not that much different in taste but I prefer yellow. They are both good. A good skillet of southern cornbread is a basic cooking skill. I put southern cornbread in to two categories. One is the cornbread that came to be favored by those who inherited the traditions from the mountains and inland and the other is the low country cornbread of the coastal regions. There are a couple of variations of each of them, but the main difference is that the inland folks began to use some flour and made a higher and richer cornbread. Some ever use sugar! Those low country folks around the coastal areas made a thinner cornbread with all cornmeal, less leavening and they used buttermilk. Sometimes I will use a bit of molasses and some whole wheat flour in a cornbread that is going to be had with a beef stew and vegetables in the winter. But that is not my go to cornbread. I understand that this is going to be something different from my "real" cornbread. Just once in a while when the weather turns colder and we begin to gravitate towards root vegetables, winter squash and the like, a small bit of rich sweetness can be welcome. If it is BBQ or beans or gumbo or any of that nature, there is nothing like a warm and crusty piece of low country cornbread. I don't use bacon grease like my mom did. I don't buy bacon but once in a long long while.