Flour on the Floor: North vs. South Cornbread Throwdown

Cornbread falls on the Southern food pyramid somewhere between chicken-fried anything and sweet tea. I grew up crumbling it on to my pinto beans which sat next to my fried pork chops.  Southern cornbread is crispy, crunchy and grainy.  The cornmeal asserts itself along with the fat used to fry it.  A napkin is required.  There is no rise, no cake, no sissy sweetness.  I knew which side of the battle I was on even before preparing the two recipes for this week’s North vs. South Cornbread Throwdown. 

My family is Southern and so, even without the twang, I am Southern.  But when I admit that I spent most of my life in Florida, guffaws and backtalk usually ensue.  “Florida is not the South,” my friends and husband say.  I protest, “But it is as far South as you can go!”  Secretly, though, I know what they mean—there is no Southern culture in Florida.  Lacking a culture of its own, it is a state defined more by its visitors than its inhabitants.  And what food would best sum that long state?  What made in a kitchen, assembled by hand?  (Insert thoughtful silence here).  Exactly.    

My culinary roots are the messy Virginian and North Carolinian kitchens of my mom and grandmother—these women who endlessly dredged meats in flour and looked for new ways to deep-fry veggies or smother them in cheese.  It was kid heaven.              

My husband, on the other hand, is from the North.  Cornbread, if he ate it at all, looked like a square hunk of cake.  It required butter.  Perhaps I am being unfair in my characterization; the Baking Illustrated editors write that “Northern-style cornbread would be good enough to eat on its own.  For Southern-style cornbread, we envisioned something drier and more crumbly…perfect with a bowl of soup or pot of greens.”

But we are all partial to those things that evoke our past and the pasts in our house are evenly split down the geographic middle.  This is why we invited some neutral friends over for the taste test.

The day of the face-off, my daughter and I tie on our aprons and assemble the ingredients for both breads.  There is almost complete overlap in the ingredient list for each recipe, though the proportions differ.  The Northern one adds flour to give it rise. 

I start with the Northern recipe because the Southern one says “serve immediately” and it is 9 a.m. and our guests are not due until evening.  My daughter gets the bag of corn meal from the pantry and by the time I turn to help, she is already cradling it in her arms and cooing, “Rock-a-bye baby.”  This little girl, who has a playroom stocked with baby dolls of all sizes, colors, and states of undress, announces, “It’s my baby cornbread!”  Sigh.    

The trailer for the movie “The Change-Up” has two men walking, one a father trying to explain parenting to his single friend.  He says, “Having children is like living with little mini heroin addicts.  I mean they’re laughing one minute and then they’re crying the next and then they’re trying to kill themselves in your bathroom for no good reason.”  My daughter is still cuddling and singing when I reach a point in the recipe where I need the cornmeal.  I know that at any moment her smiles might turn to tears and accusations as I cook her beloved. 

I tread carefully.  I explain that I need her baby to give us some cornmeal so that our recipe is yummy.  “Okay,” she says and happily hands over the sack just like that.  Whew.  Our roles return to their rightful places as she says, “I’ll do that,” and scoops the out cornmeal herself. 

By mid-morning our house smells wonderful.  By mid-afternoon, my daughter is in tears over, well, everything.  She doesn’t like her bagel (too brown), her own drawing (the crayon broke), or her brother (“he made a bad face at me!”).  I know that her sleep has been broken for several nights in a row and that we’re all cranky as a result and decide that the best course of action is for her to lie down and rest so that she’ll enjoy our company that evening.  Needless to say, she also does not like this plan.

I am relieved at her absence though, because I have looked ahead at the Southern cornbread recipe and it includes stunts with boiling water, hot butter and oil and a sizzling skillet.  In the movie world, this recipe is PG-13; it is best done without my tiny partner.  I burn the butter/oil combo and as a result, the Southern batter has flakes of black in it.  And once I have to handle that heavy, scalding pan, the recipe becomes rated-R due to language. 

Our friends arrive and margaritas are served.  We warm and butter the cornbreads and set them side by side on the table for tasting.  One plate holds square cake-like pieces while the other holds a giant round pancake that has been cut into pizza wedges.  The kids have made signs denoting “1” and “2” for voting purposes and have cut ballots and laid out markers.  We have eight voters and the children line up first.  The two four-year-old girls, in lieu of numbers they are not yet comfortable writing, draw the shapes of their favorite cornbread on their ballots.       

When it is my turn, I sample the two choices.  As expected the Southern one is crunchy and a little greasy—delicious.  But to my surprise, I also like the Northern bread.  It is moister than I anticipate and has its own nice grainy texture.  It also holds together better.  I still cast my vote for my heritage.

Now that it is over, I can confidently offer my advice for hosting a successful taste test: Don’t drink two margaritas beforehand.  This is the point in the post where I should be listing everyone’s comments about the opposing recipes.  But I don’t remember them.

So, let’s count the ballots instead.  One-two-three-four-five-six votes for—Northern cornbread!  And only two for my adored Southern one.  The twist though is that the second vote is from another of my adored: my Northern husband.  He turns to our friends and uses his stock response to anyone who doesn’t love the same food he does, “Well, you just have to have a more refined palate to appreciate it.”    

I have one convert.  It’s a start.