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Spider Corn Bread
1 egg 1 3/4 cups milk and water 1 cup corn meal 1/3 cup flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 tablespoon shortening Beat egg and add one cup milk and water; stir in sugar, corn meal, flour, salt and baking powder which have been sifted together; turn into frying pan in which shortening has been melted; pour on remainder of milk and water, but do not stir. Bake about 25 minutes in hot oven. There should be a line of creamy custard through the bread. Cut into triangles and serve.
A skillet cornbread with a deliberate layer of custard through the middle; the trick is entirely in the final pour of liquid that is never stirred in.
- The hingePour the reserved 3/4 cup of milk and water gently over the surface of the batter and leave it alone. Stirring it in destroys the custard seam, and the result is just ordinary cornbread.
- "Hot oven"Period tables put this somewhere around 400-450F; the recipe itself gives no temperature. Around 425F, 25 minutes should set the edges while the centre stays soft.
- The spiderA spider was originally a cast-iron pan with legs for hearth cooking; the word later came to mean simply a heavy skillet. Use a 9- or 10-inch cast-iron pan, and make sure it is oven-safe, handle included.
- Preheat the panMelt the shortening in the skillet over heat, or in the oven, so the pan is hot when the batter goes in. That is what gives the crisp browned underside the recipe assumes.
- "Milk and water"Diluted milk was common in recipes of this period, plausibly for economy. Any proportion works; half and half, or all whole milk for a richer custard layer.
- ShorteningButter, bacon fat or a neutral oil all substitute directly for the tablespoon of shortening.
- CornmealFine or medium yellow cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind, which will not hydrate in 25 minutes and stays gritty.
- Doneness and yieldThe top should be set and lightly browned but the centre will still wobble slightly; that is the custard, not underbaking. One 9-inch pan cuts into 6 to 8 wedges and is best eaten warm, within the hour.
This appears to be a promotional recipe of the kind found in branded baking powder booklets, one of thousands of company cookbooks distributed free in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to build habitual use of a specific tin. Its ancestor is older: the spider was a long-legged iron skillet that stood over hearth coals, and spider cornbread survived the move to cast-iron ranges under the same name long after the legs disappeared. The custard layer is the distinguishing feature of the New England version, sometimes catalogued as spider cake or custard cornbread, and is often said, by loose tradition, to have come out of Rhode Island and coastal Massachusetts kitchens. The presence of both baking powder and a sizeable proportion of wheat flour marks it as a modernised cornbread; earlier American recipes lean on eggs, sour milk and saleratus, or on nothing at all beyond a hot pan.