From Our Kitchens: Corn Pone to Spoonbread

My wife, Debbie, and I live in Macon. But we both grew up in Virginia. I am from Bristol, just across from the Tennessee state line. It is only a short drive into North Carolina, Kentucky, or West Virginia.

 According to food writer John T. Edge, who is from Clinton, Georgia, in Jones County, “While other American regions ate wheat bread, the South embraced cornbread.” 

This was certainly true in my southern Appalachian area where cornmeal breads were ubiquitous. After our mother died, my sister compiled “Mother’s Favorite Recipes” for the family. The very first page of this cookbook had recipes for Southern Pone and Spoon Corn Bread. Family meals might often include cornbread, corn sticks or hush puppies but on a rare occasion, spoonbread would be served hot out of the oven. 

Debbie is from the historic town of Smithfield, along the James River in Tidewater Virginia. The Smithfield post office features a mural of early Jamestown colonists trading for corn with the native tribes in the early 1600’s. 

Yes, this is the town known as  the “Ham Capital of the World” but it should be as famous for its quaint streets lined with colonial, federal and Victorian style houses that would make a perfect Hallmark movie setting. 

When she was 14 years old, Debbie helped after school at her grandparents’ grocery store and takeout kitchen. Her earliest memory of spoonbread was dining at the Sykes Inn on Main Street and Christiana Campbell’s Tavern in Williamsburg.  

Cornmeal breads can be as simple as cornmeal, water and salt. Ash cakes, hoe cakes, pone, dodgers and many others evolved into more complicated recipes like spoonbread.  

The late chef and cookbook author Bill Neal describes spoonbread to be “considered the most elegant preparation of cornmeal in all of Southern cooking.” 

In a presentation to the James Beard Foundation, writer Redding Sugg said that spoonbread “is the apotheosis of cornbread. Perhaps the name stuck because this Southern comfort food is best eaten with a spoon. It’s made from cornmeal, eggs, butter and milk, sometimes enlivened with baking powder and a dash of sugar.”

I collect cast-iron cookware and regional cookbooks, and I’ve made numerous culinary road trips from Rhode Island johnny cakes to New Mexico blue corn cakes with grits along the way. 

Several years ago, I attended the annual National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, where I met the head judge of the cornbread cooking contest. Treading on thin ice, I asked if it was OK to use sugar in the ingredients. 

“If you add sugar to your cornbread, then it’s cake!” she said. I didn’t have enough nerve to ask for her preference of white or yellow cornmeal.

Closer to home, I have dined at Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta for decades. I always scheduled any meeting appointments  later in the morning. That way, I could arrive at Mary Mac’s after lunch hour rush, sit at my front window table in the Skyline Room and leave Atlanta before late afternoon congestion. 

My favorite waitress, the late Martha Evans, would serve me a bowl of potlikker and basket of cornbread muffins.

Again, I’ll mention John T. Edge, who wrote “The Potlikker Papers,” about the modern South, drawing the book’s title from a 1931 debate between Atlanta Constitution editor Julian Harris and Louisiana Governor Huey Long on whether it is proper to dunk or crumble cornbread into potlikker. 

If you are not familiar, potlikker is the liquid left in the pot after cooking greens. I admit that I dunk my cornbread in the likker, while Debbie prefers to crumble hers.

 I once overheard a lady at the adjoining Skyline Room table whisper to her companion, “Look, he’s dunking his cornbread.”

 Once, after an afternoon playoff game between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros, I took a friend for his first time to Mary Mac’s. Two tables of Astro players sat down near us, and we bantered with them. Lance Berkman had hit a home run in the game and told me that I could put my tomahawk up in the closet because the Braves were done! Regretfully, he was right for that season. A rookie pitcher from Brooklyn, New York, asked me, “What is “hoppin’ john”? 

On another road trip, I stopped in Berea, Kentucky, at the Historic Boone Tavern Hotel. I was familiar with the unique Berea College where students receive full scholarships and enroll in work study programs.

Students make up part of the staff of the hotel and restaurant.  An annual Berea Spoonbread Festival pays homage to the rich culinary heritage of the South.

 Food critic John Egerton said that spoonbread is “the lightest, richest, most delicious of all cornbread dishes, a veritable cornbread souffle. It is an excellent companion to country ham and red-eye gravy — to any meat and gravy for that matter — it is a welcome and suitable menu item for any meal — breakfast, lunch or dinner.” 

He recommends the Boone Tavern,  which has “a long tradition of fine dining. The spoonbread alone is enough to justify a visit. A properly prepared spoonbread,” Egerton writes, “can be taken as testimony to the perfectibility of humankind.’’

 In addition to the name origins of spoonbread, there are many different recipes for this dish. They are often found in Southern cookbooks, classic hotel menus and online searches.  After thousands of miles of corn sampling, I’ve found my blue ribbon, top choice, first prize destination – There’s No Place Like Home! 

We enjoy spoonbread on a variety of occasions, from an outdoor supper of BBQ ribs to a holiday feast.

 Here is Debbie’s tried and true recipe from The Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, Virginia.

Spoonbread Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup of cornmeal
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a 1 1/2-quart casserole or souffle dish.
• Pour 2 cups whole milk in a saucepan, add 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil.
• Stir in 3/4 cup of cornmeal and whisk for about 2 minutes or until thickened and then pour into a mixing bowl to cool.
• Add 3 tablespoons of melted butter.
• Separate 6 eggs and beat the egg whites until stiff peaks.
• Stir the 6 egg yolks and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder into the cornmeal mixture.
• Gently scoop and fold the prepared egg whites into the mixture with a rubber spatula and pour into the greased dish.
• Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, until lightly browned, puffed, and just set in the middle.
• Serve immediately with butter.