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Spider Corn Cake
When one possesses an old-fashioned, heavy iron frying-pan or spider it will be found just the thing for a spider corn cake. To make this breakfast bread mix together 3/4 of a cupful of fine white corn-meal, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 1/3 of a teaspoonful of sifted baking-soda and 1 tablespoonful of sugar. Beat 1 egg, add to it 1 cupful of sour milk and 1/2 of a cupful of sweet milk. Stir this into the dry mixture and beat well. Have a tablespoonful of butter melted and warm in the spider; turn the pan round that bottom and sides may be thoroughly greased, then pour the remainder into the batter and beat again. Pour the batter into the hot pan and shake to level it, then very gently pour over the top another ½ cupful of sweet milk. Do not attempt to stir it in but place quickly in a hot oven and bake for about twenty minutes.
A skillet cornbread with a custard layer through the middle, and it works today with almost no adjustment. The details that matter are the pan, the sour milk, and the half cup of milk that gets poured on top and left alone.
- The hinge: do not stir the top milkThat final 1/2 cupful of sweet milk floats on the batter and sets into a soft custard seam running through the finished cake. Stirring it in, or pouring it in a hard stream that breaks the surface, gives you an ordinary damp cornbread instead.
- What a spider isAn old spider was a cast-iron frying pan on three short legs, meant to stand over coals; by the time this recipe was written the word had largely come to be used for any heavy iron skillet, as the recipe's own wording suggests. A 9 or 10-inch cast-iron pan is the right vessel, and it needs to be genuinely hot when the batter goes in.
- Hot ovenRead this as 425-450F. Preheat the skillet in the oven with the butter in it, and work quickly once the batter is poured so the pan does not lose its heat.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which pasteurised milk will not reliably reproduce. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup, or stir a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- Sifted baking-sodaSoda of this period was often lumpy and benefited from sifting; modern baking soda does not need it. A third of a teaspoon is a sensible amount against a cupful of sour milk -- enough to react with the acid without leaving a soapy taste -- so resist adding more.
- Fine white corn-mealFine-ground white meal, the Southern grind, not coarse yellow polenta grind. A coarse meal will not hydrate in twenty minutes and the crumb will be gritty.
- Doneness and yieldTwenty minutes is about right at 425F; the top should be set and pale gold and the edges pulling from the iron. It makes one 9-inch cake, four to six wedges, and it should be eaten hot from the pan with butter.
Spider cornbread belongs to the long habit of baking with a heavy iron pan that goes from hearth to table, and the name outlived the object: the original spider stood on legs among the coals, but by the time this book was printed the word had settled into ordinary usage for any weighty iron frying-pan. What distinguishes the recipe from plain skillet corn bread is the milk poured over the surface at the last moment, which sets into a custard stripe through the middle. The economy of the thing is easy to see: cornmeal was cheaper than wheat flour, sour milk was what a household had left over rather than something bought, and one egg and a spoonful of butter stretch to a hot breakfast bread for a family.