Close
Photo:
Getty Images
Picture this: A sweet, buttery cornbread and a silky soufflé have a baby. This fusion might sound like a new dish, but it’s quite the opposite. According to food writer and historian Deb Freeman, spoon bread’s first printed appearance was in the seminal 1824 Southern cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, where it was called “batter bread.”
History of Spoon Bread
But the dish’s origins go back much further to the Indigenous Sewee people of South Carolina. The nation crafted a pudding-like dish made with cornmeal long before colonizers came to the Americas. In Charleston, North Carolina, the specialty is called “Awendaw” after the Sewee people’s main village located nearby.
Freeman believes that James Hemings, a man enslaved by Thomas Jefferson and trained in French cooking, may be one of the parties responsible for adding Gallic techniques to the dish. That includes adding the beaten egg whites that make the bread similar to a soufflé. Hemings, who Jefferson enslaved as a valet and chef in the 1790s, made recipes he learned in France and adapted for the American palate. Whether or not Hemings was the one responsible for the evolution, the dish has deep ties not just to the Black community, but to the South as a whole.
How to Make Spoon Bread
Looking for something to cook in your Dutch oven or a deep cast iron skillet? Look no further. This side dish is fit for both fine-dining-style feasts like filet mignon and steakhouse potatoes and rustic Southern dinners like fried chicken and collard greens. While many spoon bread recipes more closely resemble crumbly skillet cornbread, the version below is lush enough to eat with a spoon. To make it, all you need is milk, white cornmeal, butter, eggs, white sugar, cream of tartar, and salt.
Directions
Though this isn’t the most simple spoon bread recipe, the work involved is well worth it for your next Southern-style special-occasion meal or really any dinner that could use a lift.
Get the Recipe: Traditional Appalachian Spoon Bread
Was this page helpful?
Thanks for your feedback!
Tell us why!
Other
Submit
