No sugar, no flour, no baking powder.
::folds arms formidably and sits and scowls in front of stove::
We have standards to be defended here.
::looks around:: ::notices self-assigned location::
Umm, I’m somewhat relocated, culinary-wise. I’m Georgia southern by culinary. I don’t claim 'em otherwise but they cook right.
Come to dinner. I’ll change your mind. 
Well, my husband’s from Louisiana, his parents are from Louisiana and all his ancestors were there since God was a boy and HE loves his cornbread sweet! I, however, am a Kentuckian by birth raised by a Pennsylvania mother, and SHE makes it without sugar.
Make of that what you will. 
Just because y’all ain’t from around here don’t mean ya’ll are dumb.
There’s a discussion in one of John Thorne’s books about the differences between Southern and Northern cornbread- Southern being flour-free and unsweetened, and Northern being a cakey, sweet, fluffy quick bread. I think it’s in American Pig: A Cook in Search of His Roots. He’s got three or four different recipes for the different types.
I also recommend The Cornbread Book, although it’s more quirky and has less history of cornbread stuff.
An Arkansas friend of mine makes his unsweetened, but with a cup of sour cream and a lot of oil in it. It’s not traditional, but it is divine.
Oh, and I find preheating my skillet on high on the stovetop works well. I wish my husband ate cornbread.
Thanks for all the tips, guys. Unless the weather turns roasting hot this weekend, I think we’ll do a chili ‘n’ cornbread thing for dinner. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Huh… The cornbread I’m familiar with has some wheat flour, but it’s still unsweetened and much more crumbly than fluffy. Matter of fact, I can’t picture any cornbread, including the sweet stuff, being described as “fluffy”.
Marie Callender’s cornbread is borderline “fluffy.” It’s also crap, but there you go.
It is. The book is open in front of me. His recipe for basic skillet cornbread: (yields one 8" cornbread)
1 cup stone-ground cornmeal
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 large egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp lard, bacon fat or peanut oil
Whisk dry ingredients, add liquid ingredients, whisk gently. Preheat skillet in a 425° oven. Grease pan with bacon fat. Swirl batter into skillet and bake for 20 minutes.
Cast iron, absolutely.
Crisco? Nah baby, nah! Bacon grease!
I love to take two srips of bacon and cut them into ~1cm wide mini strips, cook the strips in the skillet until they’re done, pull out the crunchy bits, let 'em cool for a couple of secs, then crunch 'em some more and add to the mix. If there happens to be some chopped jalepenos in the corn bread mix, all the better!
Cheers!
Am I crazy, or is stone-ground cornmeal just slightly below diamond on the Rockwell scale?
( Note: may not be mutally exclusive)
Every time I have made cornbread with that stuff it feels like you are going to chip a tooth!
P.s. Add me to the non-sweet camp, even though I am decidedly Northern. I f I want it sweey I drizzle honey on it and eat it for dessert.
God how I pray for a 5 minute ‘edit’ function, especially after a couple-three manhattans.
All right, I got you all beat.
Grandmother made it as described in a cast iron skillet, Crisco as I recall, buttermilk and some baking powder.
But here’s the important part.
Grandfather ate it crumbled into a glass of buttermilk while munching on hot banana peppers he grew. I begged for one once (I was just a pup) and gingerly bit the tip off. I thought I was going to die.
My grandpa had these peppers he grew that were mostly white with vivid purple streaks. Viciously hot by childhood standards. (Hotter than jalapeño, I think).
I always crumble my leftover cornbread up into a bowl and drown it in buttermilk. It’s what it’s for. Food of the gods, especially if you can get buttermilk that isn’t nonfat or lowfat.