Except my hometown, Jacksonville, which is considered the Capital of South Georgia.
And a “Hell Yes!” to Moonpies!!
I’ve only ever seen it served as a side dish with barbecue, and I’ve only seen it served in Georgia (which isn’t to say it isn’t all over the southeast, just that I haven’t seen it). It’s basically “Georgia Gumbo,” a mix of all kinds of leftovers in sauce. There are plenty of different recipes, but every version I’ve had has had: barbecue sauce base, pulled pork barbecue meat, corn, and okra.
This site has better info.
That’s okay. We won’t hold it against you.
Naw, Algernon, I ain’t funnin with y’all Yankees. Cornbread, as far as I know, ain’t sour. I been lookin in some cookbooks, and I’ve seen all kinds of recipies for cornbread. The big difference between Southern and Northern cornbread is in texture and sweetness. According to The All New All Purpose Joy of Cooking:
"Real southern cornbread is made only with stoneground cornmeal . . . , buttermilk, eggs, leavening, and salt–no flour and no sugar (777). That means that southern cornbread is crunchier and more savory than the sweeter and cakier northern cornbreads. However, to complicate things, there are variations on southern cornbread, where the cook may add anywhere from 1-3 tablespoons to up to 1/3 cup of sugar. :eek: I ain’t had a chance to consult my momma on this sugar business in cornbread. I just know that when I eat my momma’s cornbread, it don’t taste like cake, and it shore 'nough ain’t sweet. It’s just good with a little bit of butter, or with some gravy, oooh, or with some greens, or fried fish. Yum. 
Danggit. Now I’m hungry. Well, I hope this helps clear up the confusion.
Thanks celestina. I like my cornbread with a good grainy texture. If it is smooth like bread, it is too bland. I don’t know whether or not my wife adds sugar or not, though I suspect yes.
Based on the info you provided though, it might still be southern style cornbread, even with the sugar! Interesting. I’d like to try them side-by-side.
[Way OT]
Celestina,
How did you manage to get all that text in your location? I can’t get past what I have already for text length.
[/Way OT]
Hmph. “Grillin” is what you do with a grill. Any true Southerner will know whether you mean low-and-slow or hot-and-fast by the food you’re preparing. They also know that beer is the only beverage permitted near a grill and that, ideally, there’s a dog around. Anything falls on the ground and you can get to it before the dog does, it goes back on the grill.
Lessee. Jensen Beach, right near Stuart? No son, you’re from South Florida which is indeed not in the South. Through an explained quirk of geography the Mason-Dixon line actually runs across the Florida Peninsula (in a roughly straight line just below Ocala actually). Everything south of that line is actually “up north”. This odd quirk has caused much confusion over the years and appears to be caused by the fact that this is roughly where there were people settled at the time of the War of Northern Aggression.
My great-granny just rolled over in her grave. This is obviously the work of carpet-baggers and snowbirds.
only a Southerner knows how to properly “sop”…
you pour the bottom of a plate slam full of molasses (honey will do, syrup in a pinch… but none of that maple mess) and stir in butter 'til it is thick enough to tear a cathead biscuit in two, was you to drag one acrost it. Always, always, always, remember to lick the knife off before you stick it back into the butter… then dip yer biscuit into it in a short, wiping motion… when yer plate is clean, start over.
When I die, bury me deep
put a sack of biscuits at me feet
place a jar molasses in my hand
and I’ll sop my way to the promised land…
Sure-nough Southern cornbread can have some sugar in it, but just a smidge. Mom always used about a small palmful in hers–if she was making baked cornbread. If she was frying cornbread, she didn’t use sugar. They’ll probably come and revoke my accent for this, but I like sweet cornbread, specifically the Jiffy mix. It’s nummy, if you’re just making some corn muffins to go with pork chops or sweet potato soup or something. Otherwise, I like the old-fashioned stuff. You just can’t crumble sweet cornbread up in your beans or your vegetable soup, and sweet cornbread with catfish is an abomination (as is maple syrup on cornbread.)
Brunswick stew is a soup made of shreds of leftover meat and various vegetables. There are about a million different variants, often with regional names. In western Kentucky, people will either look blank or like you’ve sprouted an extra head if you start talking about Brunswick stew. It burgoo, and it’s got mutton in it. (Do not look up from your lamb chops to tell me how disgusting mutton sounds. I don’t wanna hear it. If you don’t want your mutton, shut up and slide it on over here and I’ll take care of it for you. Oh, and while you’re up, go get me some blackberry cobbler, would you? Thanks.)
Slight nitpick about North Carolina barbecue–slaw ain’t served on the side, it’s served on the meat. I was a little horrified the first time I ordered a sandwich and somebody told me it was going to have slaw on it, picturing the creamy, carrot-laden slaw my grandma always made. But it’s a vinegar-based slaw, and it’s fabulous with the pork. Oh, and barbecue here is served with hushpuppies. Tubular hushpuppies. There’s a place on the way to Emerald Isle where you can actually get a “pig in a puppy”, a giant hushpuppy sliced and filled with barbecue and slaw. It’s some damn good eatin’, let me tell you.
And yes, barbecue is always a noun. You’re either grillin’, cookin’ out, or cookin’ up some barbecue. You are never “barbecueing” anything.
Mmmmmm, mutton and burgoo… sounds like home.
Okay, well corn muffins can be sweet (and I like them as well), but I still contend that cornbread has no business being made with sugar.
I prefer grillin’ as being more specific since cookin’ out could include low country boil which is not done on the grill. I’ve heard of people cookin’ up some barbecue, but it always sounded silly to me. Cookin’ is done inside, grillin is done outside. YMMV. 
Oh, God…hushpuppies! I now have a lap full of drool. Sure sign I love my wife: she has no idea what hushpuppies are, and I married her anyway!
Proper cornbread must be made without sugar, and poured into a blistering-hot cast-iron skillet before being shoved into the oven to bake. You may add jalapenos, cheese, bacon and such to the mix, but NO SUGAR!!! (Damn Yankees!)
Ya, it says Southern California on my location, but it’s by God Southern California!
Re: barbecue and burgoo
In Western Kentucky, the preferred meat for barbecue is mutton!
How mutton became the king of barbecue in Western Kentucky The answer: excess sheep! LOL
I have a recipe for bugoo that calls for a squirrel. You don’t get much more Southern than that.
Trust me: you remember incorrectly.
As for sugar in cornbread, a little bit of it adds to the crunch, I’m convinced, and adds to the color: as the sugar caramelizes against the buttered cast-iron skillet, you get a lovely rich golden brown crust. Too much wouldn’t be good, but a little bit is great.
As for making it without any flour, I’ve never tried that, and should give it a go sometime.
Algernon, there’s hardly any food more yankified than maple syrup; thus the blasphemy. Next thing you know, I’ll be serving pulled pork with a side of poutine.
Daniel
Algernon, you’re welcome, hon. I forgot to give you the name of another cookbook to consult on cornbread and other yummy southern recipies. It’s called: Soul Food: Classic Cuisine from the Deep South by Sheila Ferguson. The recipies in here for cornbread have some sugar and some flour as well. I’ve heard mixed reviews about this cookbook. Some folks upset by the fact that you got to play around a little bit with the recipies to make them come out right. Well, I say since it’s like pullin’ eyeteeth to get a good cook to give you some directions–they don’t never measure nothin’–Ferguson gave it her best guess. Still, I’ve had other friends swear by this cookbook too, sayin’ they enjoyed the recipies.
Zakalwe, I don’t know where the sugar came from. Honest. Cornbread is a variation on corn pone, what black folks used to fry up on the griddle since during slavery times cornmeal and molasses and a little salt pork along with the least choice cuts of meat like hog intestines (chittlins), pig’s feet, and so on was the main staple of enslaved Africans’ diet. Maybe one day a southern cook got to experimentin’ . . .
And since y’all got my mind on food now :mad: I was just sittin here lazily sippin on a cup of lapsang souchong, and now I got to go figger out what to cook for dinner . . .
One thing Southerners really know is Soul Food. Yes, even them misplaced Southerners what went North and West.
vunderbob, I don’t know how I got it in. I just did. It’s been there a long time.
Here in VA it is Brunswick stew (named after Brunswick County, where we claim it was first produced). Traditionally, it contained squirrel, but I think commercial stew now contains chicken or pork.
Cornbread, out of a cast iron skillet, squished down in a glass of ice cold milk and eaten with a spoon…heaven.
Barbecue (which is smoked PORK covered in sauce (some choose vinegar based, some choose tomato based - I leave that debate alone), on white bread, with cole slaw piled high on the sandwich, and hushpuppies, and baked beans, and cold beer…more heaven.
Look, think for just a tiny second what you’re trying to do. Citing a dictionary with regard to Southern speech and grammar. What’s wrong with that thought? C’mon, get some of your brain cells working.
Southerners don’t give a possum’s butt about any dictionary or any rule of grammar of any sort, even if it supposedly refers to Southern versions of said.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t hear abominations like “I done bought me a shirt.” all the time.
These are Southerners, they don’t care about dictionary citations!
Note that you are unlikely to see “nuculer” in a dictionary either, but does that mean you are suffering from auditory hallucinations when you hear it?
You got an awful low opinion of Southerners, dontcha? Look, you have your experiences, and I have mine. Mine happen to mostly agree with the dictionaries. Sure, you get the occassional Southerner who mangles the grammar, but you get those all over the country.
Pin and pen are homonyms, as are gym and gem. But bit and bet are not. All the aforementioned terms are two syllables. Mary, merry, and marry all sound like Murray.
Even if you were right–and you’re not–it’s irrelevant. The question isn’t whether Southerners care about dictionaries; the question is whether dictionaries care about Southerners.
And I guarangoldangtee you that dictionaries, when discussing the word “y’all,” care about Southerners. If a dictionary’s definition of the word doesn’t match the way the word is used, then it’s a prescriptionary, an entirely different beast.
I’ve grown up in the South, and I don’t recall ever hearing a native Southerner use “y’all” as a singular pronoun. Hell, when I was taught grammar in the sixth grade, between units on gerunds and units on direct objects we learned about pronoun person and number, and the second-person plural we learned was, I’m not making this up, “y’all.” (Our teacher mentioned that there was another second-person plural as well, but “y’all” was perfectly acceptable on all tests).
I’m not disputing that you’ve heard someone say “y’all” as the second-person singular; but that person doesn’t use the word as the vast majority of Southerners in my experience, in the dictionary-writers’ experience, and other posters’ experience, use the word.
Daniel
Serving good Eastern NC Barbecue with wonder bread makes Baby Jesus cry. Stick it on a bun, with slaw.
Well, that’s the difference between a Barbecue sandwich (sammich) and a Barbecue plate. With the plate, the slaw is served on the side… with the understanding that both slaw and meat must end up on the fork together.
Dammit! Now I’m hungry.