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Corn Bread (One cup of meal two cups)
One cup of meal, two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, two teaspoons of sugar, one egg, one tablespoon of lard or butter, enough milk or cold water to make a dough of the proper consistency.
— Miss Harriet Johnson
A terse village receipt that assumes the cook already knows what corn bread batter looks like. The proportions are sound; only the omissions need filling in.
- Meal and flour"Meal" here is cornmeal. Two parts wheat flour to one part cornmeal gives a soft, cakey bread rather than the crumbly all-cornmeal style of the South.
- Salt is missingNo salt is listed. Add about half a teaspoon; without it the bread tastes flat.
- "Proper consistency"The receipt says dough, and the amount of liquid is left to the cook; add milk gradually until the mixture is thick and just spoonable. Mix only until the dry streaks vanish; overworking gives a tough, tunnelled crumb.
- Lard or butterMelt it and stir it in with the liquid. Lard was the everyday shortening in a farm kitchen and produces a slightly more tender crumb; butter adds flavour.
- Oven and panNo oven heat or pan is given. Bake at 425F in a greased 8-inch square pan or a preheated cast-iron skillet, 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is set and a straw comes out clean. Heating the greased pan first gives a crisp bottom crust.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for three cups of dry ingredients is on the light side by modern standards; current double-acting powder is reliable, but if your tin has been open a year, replace it.
- YieldOne 8-inch pan, cutting into nine squares — enough for a family breakfast or to go alongside supper.
Corn bread in a regional receipt book sits at a crossroads: cornmeal was the oldest grain in the region, grown and ground locally long before commercial wheat flour was cheap, while the two-to-one flour ratio here shows how thoroughly Northern cooks had begun diluting it once barrel flour became affordable. Baking powder, commercially available from the mid-nineteenth century, replaced the older saleratus-and-sour-milk method and made a quick bread like this genuinely quick. Books of this sort, each credited as Miss Harriet Johnson is here, were often compiled from named contributors, and may well account for the brevity: those who used them already knew how corn bread should look in the bowl.