Spoonbread
This is the most important baked corn dish in the southern repertoire, a Europeanized rendering of the traditional Native American porridge sappawn or awendaw, turning it into a baked dish by the admixture of milk and eggs. Much of the last part of the 20th century in southern cookery was spent tarting it up, making it more like a soufflé by adding flavor additives such as cheese, bacon, or garlic. In the early part of the 20th century the substitution of buttermilk for milk and the incorporation of cooked rice were the two emendations of the classic form. If you use a truly excellent heirloom corn meal (Virginia gourdseed, or sea island white flint, or Rhode Island White Cap if you are in New England), the flavor is so profound that no extra ingredients are needed. It is traditional to use white corn in spoonbread. I abide by that old directive, but don’t see why there couldn’t be superb spoonbread made out of Jimmy Red corn or even yellow corn.
There are tricks to spoonbread. You must cook the cornmeal in milk in a saucepan over modest heat stirring it until it has a thick smooth consistency. Then add butter. One of the things that happened in the 20th century was the bump up in the amount of butter in the mix (to the point where some were doing a 1 to 1 proportion with the meal—that is if you use two cups of milk and ½ cup of corn meal, you stir in ½ cup of unsalted butter. The butter is added while the cornmeal mixture is still hot, so that it melts in. The 4 eggs are added after the mixture has cooled down, as are the baking powder and salt. Those who go the soufflé route do the yolks first, beat the whites and then fold those in. It is baked in a dish at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes depending on your oven.
Spoonbread has been associated with Virginia as a characteristic dish, despite the first printed recipe appearing in Sarah Rutledge’s The Carolina Housewife (1847). The Carolina version was called Awendaw, referencing its Native origins. In Virginia the predominant name until the early 20th century was “batter bread.” Spoonbread seems to have been a designation used only in a few parts of the state until the 1920s when writers determined it would be the prevalent designation. The first mention of “batter bread” comes in an ad for baking powder contained in the Richmond Whig of December 29, 1843. By the mid 1870s it had become a characteristic Virginia dish and was called out in the roll of desirable local dishes that a man indulges when he receives his “fifty millions” cash: “spare-ribs, broiled ham and eggs, beefsteak and onions, corned shad and chitlins on toast. We also had some batter bread, some batter cakes, some buckwheat cakes some flannel cakes, some hominy, some turn-overs, some griddle cases, some beat biscuit, some muffins and some heavenly waffles.” (“What I did with my Fifty Millions,” Richmond Whig, May 8, 1874, 4).
The dish went national shortly after World War 2. Before that it was a regional offering in Richmond and Charleston and environs, sometimes found on a hotel menu, a boarding house staple, and something made at home. In 1922 The Richmond Times Dispatch held a contest for the best Old Virginia Batter Bread recipe. It was won by Mrs. P. H. Boisseau of Danville. But during the post-war peace, the hotel chefs of the Old Dominion invited northern chefs and food writers to sample the local cuisine at a conclave in Fredericksburg. The one thing that set the northerners raving was spoonbread. It was served with cured herring roe (a traditional breakfast food). From that moment on it became a hotel staple throughout the South, a dish that northern tourists requested during their vacation jaunts southward. Recipes began appearing in newspapers.
I’m not getting into the controversy over whether sugar can be added to the formula. You’ll note that the prize winning recipe doesn’t have it, but others do. I am, however, not one to pour maple syrup on top. Simple butter will do.