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Carolina Batter Bread
One quart of Indian meal, sifted twice, two teaspoonfuls baking powder, one quart of sweet milk, two eggs, beaten light, one tablespoonful of melted lard, one teaspoonful of salt. Beat the batter until very light, cook quickly. It will be light and soft.
This is a spoonbread in all but name: a quart of liquid to a quart of meal makes a batter you pour, not a dough you shape. Expect something closer to a savory pudding than to cornbread.
- Indian mealThis is simply cornmeal. For a Carolina batter bread use fine-ground white cornmeal; a coarse yellow meal will give a grittier, heavier result.
- Quart measuresA quart is 4 cups. So 4 cups cornmeal, 4 cups milk, which is a very slack batter by modern cornbread standards and is meant to be.
- Sweet milkFresh whole milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabber that would otherwise have been on hand. Whole milk is the right substitute; skim thins an already thin batter.
- Cook quicklyThe recipe says only to cook it quickly; it names no oven and no temperature. A hot oven, somewhere in the region of 425F, is a reasonable reading. Preheat a greased iron skillet or baking dish, pour the batter in, and bake until set in the center and browned on top; timing will depend on the depth of the dish.
- LardOne tablespoon of melted lard is for flavor and to keep the crumb tender. Bacon drippings are the closest match; melted butter works and tastes a little sweeter.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons of baking powder for 4 cups of meal is modest by modern standards. The beaten eggs and the hard beating of the batter probably contribute much of the lift; do not expect a high rise.
- Beat the batter until very lightThis is the hinge. Cornmeal has no gluten to overwork, so beat vigorously to aerate and to let the meal begin absorbing the milk. A few minutes of rest before baking gives a smoother texture.
- ServingA quart of meal and a quart of milk make a large quantity of batter, more than a 9- or 10-inch skillet will hold; use a large baking dish or divide it between pans. It is soft enough that it should be spooned onto the plate and eaten hot with butter; it does not slice cleanly and does not keep well.
Batter bread is an older Southern name for what is now generally called spoonbread, and the term persisted in Virginia and the Carolinas, where a soft, milk-and-egg-rich cornmeal bread eaten with a spoon was ordinary fare. Its ancestry is usually traced through English batter puddings and the boiled and baked cornmeal preparations of Native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, from whom colonists took both the grain and the habit of cooking it wet; "Indian meal" was a common American term for cornmeal through the nineteenth century, distinguishing it from wheat flour. The Charleston version made with cooked hominy is often called awendaw, said to take its name from a settlement north of the city.