Soap, cornbread and the South
Saturday October 31, 2009
I just got off the phone with Regina Charbonneau down at Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast in Natchez. I'd phoned her because she wrote this great piece on the Atlantic's Food Channel about making cane syrup in the South. I...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Let me save the liberals and leftists here some trouble:
"Racist! Racist! Racist!"
I love good cornbread, so that means I love the sweet type. Go suck eggs Dreher. :-) We do an annual dinner for my son's debate club for about 100 people as a fundraiser. We make a big batch of red beans and rice and lots of cornbread. The folks here, Pennsylvania, just eat it up. Cornbread is one of those things I just forget to make for a while, then once you make it you kick yourself for not making it more often. BTW, we are about to engage in some experiments with spelt, as we found a local grower.
Steve
I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where the Quaker Oats company was located and used to have its main plants. The founder of the company, Ferdinand Schumacher, made his money with government contracts to supply oatmeal to the Union Army during the Civil War. The way the local company histories always told it, the government figured that, while cornbread was good enough for the Rebels, good Northern boys should be eating oatmeal. ;-)
PS -- having contributed that bit of local folklore, I have to admit that I do love cornbread, though I'm afraid most of my experience doesn't extend beyond the Jiffy mix in a box. ;-)
I am pleased to report that Regina's recipe is mostly on the side of the angels -- the savory tribe -- in this dispute.
After my sister and I read this, we wondered how someone who claims to be Southern could possibly issue such a treasonous usurpation against the Confederacy. But then we realized that you were part of Louisianna that was heavily influenced by France, and that explained everything to us.
Just remember that southeastern New England is also home to an ur cornbread classically made with white cap flint corn meal (there are only three grist mills that produce it now: Gray's, Carpenter's and Kenyon's - this type of corn is so hard that it really wears down mills) without much or any sugar: the venerable jonnycake (there are thick and thin versions - I prefer the thin, lacy kind). Now, folks often top it with butter and syrup, but the cake itself is not. I don't think it's coincidence that this part of the North favors white cornmeal: the ports in the area (especially Bristol - now part of Rhode Island but formerly part of Massachusetts) were intimately involved in the Triangle Trade, and white cap flint corn is the ancient corn type that early settlers bred from the native stock.
Anyway, jonnycakes can support both sweet and savory uses. They are the ur cornbread for European Americans.
http://www.graysgristmill.com/recipes.html
http://www.farmfresh.org/food/member.php?fn=374
http://www.kenyonsgristmill.com/yankee_grandmother.html
Southerners should not assume that they are the only 'Murkins who are passionate about cornbreads.
If you're visiting Rhode Island and nearby in early May, you should partake of the May breakfasts.
I'll eat either, but prefer the savory. Up here in Boston, they put so much sugar in the cornbread (at least where I've had it) that they might as well slap some frosting on it and call it a cupcake. Not my style at all.
My wife is from Georgia, and I'm from New Hampshire. The first time I made cornbread for her, she told me it needed more sugar and more butter. Her claim was it was the Southern (and therefore proper) way to make cornbread. I prefer it with habanero or jalapeno peppers, myself.
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