Cornbread: Sugar/No Sugar ? Both Ways ?

Corn bread ignites debate even as it soothes the soul
Is the sugar in corn bread a cultural thing? Or does it just make it taste better ?

07:42 AM CST on Wednesday, January 11, 2006
By BILL MARVEL / The Dallas Morning News

Asking a Southerner about sugar in corn bread is like asking a Texan about beans in chili. Be prepared for at least an argument, and maybe a fight.

KYE R. LEE / DMN
Most restaurant corn bread contains a noticeable amount of sugar. Many Southern cooks don't use sugar at all. Click here for recipes.
Atlanta-born John Egerton, author of Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History, is a strict constructionist. "My mother made corn bread almost every day," he says. "I don't associate sugar with corn bread."
On the other hand, food writer Matthew B. Rowley waffles.
"Bristles are raised when you introduce sugar into corn bread," he says. "People say, 'That's a Yankee aberration.'"
Not quite true, he says. "I have found plenty of Southerners will admit they add sugar.
"But it's not yellow cake."
Adrian Miller, who is writing a book on African-American cooking, sees in the dispute the outlines of class and racial differences.
"A lot of people think I'm crazy, but I've been looking at cookbooks by African-Americans, and a lot call for sugar to be added to corn bread," he says.
"That's supposed to be a no-no. But if you talk to them, they'll say, 'Yeah, I'll put a little bit of sugar in.'"
He has a theory: "Folks who used white corn meal, which tended to be sweeter, may have thought sugar was redundant. Yellow corn meal is less sweet; it's thought of as inferior. Poor whites and blacks would have used more yellow meal."
But Dr. Jessica Harris doubts the corn-bread theory.
"To my taste buds, yellow corn meal is a little more sweet," she says. "I am not of the little-pinch-in-cornmeal school.
"There are two schools of African-American cooking, the purist school, and the embellishment school. My mother was a purist. The embellishment school is, 'If they're good this way, if we put this and this on them, they'd be better.'
"I think they're just separate traditions."
The whole argument may be moot, anyway, says Damon Lee Fowler, whose New Southern Baking offers recipes for corn bread with scallions, bacon drippings, onions, assorted herbs. But not sugar.
"Corn bread with sugar is coming to be universal," he says. Almost all restaurant corn bread is sweetened, "because they have to appeal to the broadest tastes."
E-mail bmarvel@dallasnews.com
source:http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/taste/stories/011106dnlivnf_cornbread.f85929d.html