It’s pretty well known by now that corn 🌽 (maze) and it’s almost limitless uses was introduced to settlers & slaves by Native Americans. Native Americans, settlers, slaves, all used corn for everything from food, to soap.
Though it quickly became a southern food staple, cornbread is often attributed to Black culture and Soul Food. This is primarily because their social cache left little option. Blacks had adapted to surviving on very little, a filler such as cornbread would serve as a sufficient additive to any meal to “make it spread” as my mama would say. This attribution would also likely be a result of Europeans’ traditional preference for wheat breads. The South was entirely too hot to grow wheat, so everyone embraced this delightful compliment to a meal at one point. ☝🏽Oooooh, but once a system for transportation of goods was developed and wheat could be brought into southern homes with greater ease, cornbread was left to those who could make better use of it -folks or lesser social status. This is largely because wheat wasn’t inexpensive. Just think “Wheat - for the elite. Corn - for everyone else.”
From slaves to sharecroppers, cornbread graced many a table, becoming a symbol of Soul Food. It came to exemplify ingenuity in itself being an adopted and adapted contribution to the budding structure of Southern culture and taken to new heights and depths of flavor and appeal by those who kept the tradition (value) alive.
"an adopted and adapted contribution..."
Cornbread has developed many "rules and regulations" over the years. Traditionally, it was to be eaten while hot, baked in a skillet containing more (white) cornmeal than flour and little to no sweetener at all. These were ideals directly adopted from exchanges between Native Americans and Europeans.
What we know as cornbread (involving milk & eggs, and even loads of sugar for some folks, is more closely related to “corn pone” considering its texture and thickness; earlier versions of cornbread involved cracklin' bread, hot-water cornbread, ash-cakes, and johnny-cakes.
As it became less of a bread of necessity, folks started to whip up a pan of cornbread for sake of pure enjoyment and doing all types of unnecessary stuff with it....like add cheese.
Before we get to the recipe, let me tell you a bit more about myself. My people definitely know how to clang & bang a few pots and pans, but I don’t come from any blood line of “beasts” in the kitchen. There are few family recipes to will down aside from those that I’ve decoded (😑) and the few that I manage to think up with my favorite sister-in-law, Jennifer. I didn’t grow up baking cookies with my mom (it took a while to “come out of the pantry” & profess my passion), I didn’t make biscuits with my Nana and allat.
My Pops, though, is to blame for my start in the kitchen -letting me tinker around on my own burning and churning whatever I thought would work. When I was about 6, homie would to invite my first cousins and their friends over for Sunday dinner every week and I got to show out.
After church, we’d would run down to John Carter’s Place in Fort Worth and grab a few dishes to throw into our dishes at home 🤷🏽♂️. In the spirit of not faking it so hard that we’d forget to make it, one dish was actually prepared in our home -cornbread.
It was nothing more than Jiffy with a little cheese sprinkled in, but I was proud of it! And my family grew to anticipate the deemed "Juju Cornbread". Having them in mind, this one is for the fam, y’all. The first recipe I ever developed -Juju Cornbread...all grown up.
Until next time, I challenge you to live good, to do good and to eat good. But above all else, from deep in my soul, I wish you happy feelin's. See ya in the kitchen!
-Julian B.