Cornbread

Cornbread is a quick bread of cornmeal, buttermilk and egg, baked until the top browns and the inside stays moist and slightly grainy. It's the everyday bread of the American South, and its roots go back further than the country itself — early settlers learned to grind and bake corn from Native American communities, long before wheat flour was reliably available on the frontier.

What it really is

Cornmeal mixes with a little wheat flour, buttermilk, egg and melted fat, the batter loose enough to pour rather than knead — this is a quick bread leavened with baking powder or soda, not yeast, so there's no rise time to wait through. It bakes in a hot, heavily greased pan, often a cast iron skillet preheated in the oven so the batter sizzles the moment it hits the pan, giving the bottom and edges a deep, crisp crust while the centre stays soft and slightly crumbly.

Sweet versus savoury is a real, longstanding regional divide. Southern cornbread is traditionally savoury, sometimes made with no sugar at all; the sweeter, cake-like version more common further north is a genuinely different style, not a corruption of the original.

How it's served

• Warm, cut into wedges or squares straight from the skillet.
• With butter, honey, or alongside a bowl of beans, chili or greens.
• As a side, rarely the centre of a plate on its own.

How to write it on the menu

• Say if it's sweet or savoury, since the difference matters to guests with a strong preference either way.
• Flag the wheat, dairy and egg.
• Note if it's baked in cast iron, since that crisp bottom crust is part of what regulars expect.