Plain Corn Bread

A bare-bones sour-milk corn bread with no wheat flour and no sugar, typical of everyday Northern and Midwestern baking around 1900. The proportions are given by feel, so the batter itself is your measure.

• How thick is "a thick batter"Aim for something that mounds on a spoon but still pours sluggishly, roughly like a thick pancake batter. That works out to about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of cornmeal for the 2 cups of milk; add it gradually rather than all at once.
• Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered raw milk, which no longer exists in a supermarket. Buttermilk is the accepted stand-in; plain milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup also works. The acid is not optional here, since it is what activates the soda.
• Soda"Soda" is baking soda; books of this vintage often say saleratus, though saleratus originally meant potassium bicarbonate rather than the sodium bicarbonate sold now. One level teaspoon to 2 cups of buttermilk is about the usual proportion; if the finished bread tastes faintly soapy or metallic, drop to 3/4 teaspoon.
• Hot ovenRoughly 400-450F; 425F is a safe single figure. Corn bread wants a fast, dry heat so the outside sets and browns before the crumb dries out. Give it 20 to 25 minutes in a 9-inch pan, until the edges pull away and the top is deeply speckled.
• LardMelted lard gives the cleanest corn flavor and the crispest crust; butter browns more and tastes richer. Either is fine. Stir it in last, after the meal, so it does not seize against the cold milk.
• The pan matters more than the recipeThe pan -- The recipe does not say what to bake it in. Preheating a greased cast-iron skillet and pouring the batter in hot is a reliable way to get a crackling bottom crust from a lean, sugarless batter.
• CornmealStone-ground medium meal, white or yellow, is likely closest to what the book assumed. Degerminated supermarket meal behaves somewhat differently, so judge by the batter and adjust the amount of meal to reach the thickness you want.
• YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pan, serving six to eight as a side. It is best within an hour of baking; with no sugar or wheat flour to hold moisture, it goes dry and crumbly by the next day.