Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Corn Bread
Corn Bread
Mrs. Juliet L. Strayer, One-half pint of buttermilk, one-half pint of sweet milk; sweeten the sour milk with one-half teaspoon of soda; beat two eggs, whites and yolks together; pour the milk into the eggs, then thicken with about nine tablespoons of sifted corn meal. Put the pan on the stove with a piece of lard the size of an egg; when melted pour it in the batter; this lard by stirring it will grease the pan to bake in; add a teaspoon of salt.
A very loose batter bread rather than a crumbly modern cornbread — closer to a spoonbread or batter cake. The original gives no pan size, oven heat or time, so those need filling in.
- The measuresHalf a pint is one cup, so use 1 cup buttermilk and 1 cup whole milk ("sweet milk" simply means fresh, unsoured). Lard "the size of an egg" is about 1/4 cup, or 2 oz.
- Nine tablespoons is not a lotThat is a little over 1/2 cup of cornmeal to 2 cups of liquid plus two eggs. The batter will be pourable and thin, and the result sets soft and custardy in the middle. This is intentional for the style, not an error, but do not expect a sliceable loaf.
- CornmealUse plain fine or medium stone-ground yellow or white cornmeal, not self-rising cornmeal mix and not coarse polenta. Sifting, as directed, keeps the thin batter from lumping.
- The sodaHalf a teaspoon of soda against a full cup of buttermilk is the only leavening — there is no baking powder. Stir it into the sour milk, mix everything quickly, and get the pan into the oven while the batter is still fizzing.
- The hot fat trickMelting the lard in the pan on the stove, then pouring it into the batter and stirring, greases the pan and warms the batter at once. The recipe says nothing about how hot the pan should be, but a hot pan and a cast-iron one will give the best crust.
- OvenNone is specified. Bake at 425F for 25 to 30 minutes, until set in the centre and browned at the rim. A 9-inch skillet or an 8-inch square pan is the right size for this quantity.
- SaltA full teaspoon reads high by modern habit but is reasonable for this volume of batter, especially with unsalted lard. Cut to 3/4 teaspoon if using salted butter in place of the lard.
- Yield and servingAbout six modest portions. Serve hot from the pan with butter; a batter this soft is best eaten soon after it comes out and is poor reheated.
The Home Cook Book, a Chicago compilation generally dated to the mid-1870s, was assembled from recipes contributed by named local women, which is why this one carries Mrs. Juliet L. Strayer's signature rather than a house style — each contributor wrote as she cooked, assuming a reader who already knew what a corn bread should look like and needed no oven setting. The reliance on soda and sour milk places it in the decades when chemical leavening was still commonly assembled by hand at the mixing bowl: commercial baking powders existed by the 1870s but are often said to have been expensive and viewed with suspicion, while buttermilk was a free by-product of home butter-making and soda cost almost nothing. The half-buttermilk, half-sweet-milk split is a practical compromise — enough acid to drive the soda, enough fresh milk to keep the crumb from tasting sharp. Cornmeal batter breads of this thin, spooned-out kind were eaten across the country, in kitchens where cornmeal remained a daily staple rather than an occasional one.