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Plain Corn Bread
One well-heaped pint corn meal, one pint sour or buttermilk, one egg, one tea-spoon soda, one of salt; bake in dripping or gem pans. If preferred, one heaping table-spoon of sugar may be added.
A lean, sugar-optional cornbread of the kind that was daily bread across the Midwest and South. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no fat, both of which need addressing before it works in a modern kitchen.
- MeasuresA pint is two cups, so this is roughly 2 cups (a little over, "well-heaped") of cornmeal to 2 cups of buttermilk, one egg, a teaspoon of soda and a teaspoon of salt. That gives a pourable batter rather than a stiff dough.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. A hot oven suits cornbread; around 425F is the usual modern choice, and a cooler oven will give a paler, softer crust.
- Gem pansA gem pan is the cast-iron ancestor of the muffin tin, with round or oval cups. A "dripping pan" is the shallow roasting pan that sat under meat. Either a 9-inch skillet, an 8-inch square pan or a 12-cup muffin tin works; muffins take about 15-18 minutes, a pan 20-25.
- Sour milkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk left to clabber. Pasteurised milk spoils rather than sours, so use cultured buttermilk. The acid is not optional here: it is what the teaspoon of soda reacts with, and there is no baking powder to fall back on.
- The cornmeal mattersThis has no wheat flour at all, so texture depends entirely on the meal. Stone-ground medium or fine meal gives the intended tender crumb; coarse polenta-grind will read as gritty.
- Grease the pan hotThere is no fat in the batter at all. Put a tablespoon or two of bacon drippings, butter or oil in the pan, heat it in the oven until it shimmers, then pour the batter in. That sizzle is the whole crust.
- Work fastSoda and buttermilk start reacting the moment they meet. Mix the dry, add the liquid and egg, stir just to combine, and get it into the hot pan.
- YieldAbout twelve muffins or one 8- to 9-inch pan, serving six to eight alongside a meal. It is best within an hour of baking and stales quickly.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio in 1877, compiled from contributions by churchwomen, and this recipe shows the economy that runs through the whole book: cornmeal, leftover soured milk, one egg, no wheat, no butter. Corn bread leavened with soda and sour milk was a standard American quick bread of the century, made possible by the wide availability of saleratus and later refined bicarbonate of soda from the 1840s onward, which let a cook raise a loaf in minutes instead of waiting on yeast. The suggestion that "one heaping table-spoon of sugar may be added" is worth noting: here at least, sugar is offered as an option rather than assumed.