“C” is for Cornbread. Cornbread has been the most common daily bread in South Carolina since its founding. Sarah Rutledge included thirty-four variations in The Carolina Housewife in 1847. By then, the traditional hoe cake, or Johnny cake, or pone—a simple hearth bread of corn cornmeal and water had evolved into many elaborate forms. Corn from Virginia--a white dent corn--was preferred. Corn, like rice was much less expensive than wheat and both grains filled breads of all sorts. But cornbread--whether made from cooked grits, coarse meal, or fine corn flour--has maintained its popularity, from the Piedmont to the coast, throughout South Carolina's history. Nearly all of Sarah Rutledge’s cornbread recipes would point to modern forms with milk or buttermilk, eggs and leavening added to the original pone mixture of ground cornmeal and water.
“C” is for Cornbread
