Varieties of corn bread abound all across America, from the big yellow squares that accompany a Yankee boiled dinner to blue corn cakes in New Mexico and corn dog jackets everywhere. Corn bread in the South may be laced with oinky cracklin’s; at the Cornbread Cafe in Eugene, Oregon, triangles of corn bread that come with every meal are purely vegan.
Corn bread sandwiches barbecue in Nashville, Tennessee.
In much of the mid-South, the term corn bread refers to a corn cake.
Fragile corn bread is especially good for crumbling into soups or onto hot vegetables.
Skillet corn bread at Zarzour’s in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Generally speaking, corn bread tends to be sweet in the North and more savory in the South, where it often appears in the form of corn dodgers, oval or tubular little corn cakes that may be cooked in cast iron molds that make them look like little ears of corn. Expect corn dodgers or muffins in the bread basket at most meat and threes.
A barbecue tray at the Skylight Inn of Ayden, North Carolina, includes a tile of chewy corn bread.
In Tennessee, particularly around Nashville, corn bread is the term for a griddle-cooked pancake that comes alongside a meal and is extremely useful for pushing food around on a plate and sopping up gravy. The same flat cakes may be used in lieu of bread to make a barbecue sandwich.
Also see: hushpuppies, jonnycake, spoonbread.