Annie Jean Gash (1879-1970) was a Transylvanian who attended college and returned to Brevard to live out her life. During her enrollment at Columbia University in New York City, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Domestic Science, and as part of her studies she wrote an essay on the differences between northern and southern corn bread.

Regional cooks have very strong preferences for corn bread ingredients, and Gash’s treatise on corn bread, written sometime between 1902 -1906, shows that the debate has been ongoing for over a century. Annie Jean’s corn bread essay is included below:

Southern Corn Bread

As a subject for demonstration at Teachers College, I chose “corn bread” and on my return, after the Christmas vacation, I brought freshly ground meal from a mill on the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.

THE secret of good “water ground” meal is that it must be used fresh. Granular or bolted meal such as is used throughout the north has the heart or germ of the grain removed in the grinding process, and with it goes nearly all the fat and much of the sugar, leaving only starch and a small amount, about 0.9% protein as food value.

The fact that unbolted meal does contain so much fat, nearly 5%, and that this oil easily becomes rancid accounts for the quickness with which the meal gets musty or loses its freshness.

Throughout the South “going to mill” is at least a fortnightly job – and it is only in the larger towns that “meal” is ever sold. Corn is carried to mill by each family.

Another radical difference between southern and northern corn bread is in the sweetening. The percentage of sugar in the whole grain is retained by the Southern method of grinding, and no sugar is ever added. To one “bred on the pone” sugared corn bread never tastes right – it seems artificial. Seldom too, except in pancakes, is there any addition of flour.

Southern meal is rough edged and moist from fat (if I may so express it) and a batter made with it holds together in a manner entirely different from that made of granular meal.

The names for different varieties of corn bread are indifferently applied in cookbooks, but in the South there are only two commonly used terms. Corn bread or plain corn bread means a pone or cake or dodger made stiff enough to mold with the hands while muffins or corn muffins is used for “batter bread”.

“Corn bread” may contain only salt, water, and meal, or some fat (either lard or bacon) may be added, and buttermilk with soda may be substituted wholly or in part for the water.

“Muffins” on the other hand are never made with water and seldom with baking powder, but usually with soda and buttermilk. Eggs are added, the number varying in inverse proportions to the price.

Corn bread should always be baked in a hot oven and is better if put into sizzling hot iron pans.

Probably the greatest contrast between northern and southern cornbread is after all in the amount consumed. In the state I know best, the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee, there is scarcely a day in the year in which corn bread is not served at one meal and as often as not it appears as muffins for either breakfast or supper besides at dinner, where it is an invariable accompaniment of vegetables – and in New York City, I don’t see corn bread once a month!

Perhaps you wonder we do not tire of it; so do we wonder that you do not grow weary of baker’s bread, and we can eat corn bread without any injury. It is, I think, largely responsible for our reputation as eaters of hot bread.

According to the government bulletins, and indeed almost all accessible authorities, corn is a cheap and most nutritious bread stuff whose use should be more widely recognized.

It is not my purpose to act as a missionary by trying to convince you of your wrongs. I will only say that if you KNEW what you were missing, you’d demand Southern meal, and that the meal “guaranteed fresh” by the few northern merchants who slip it from the South could not grow musty on their shelves. – Annie Jean Gash

Personal preferences for corn bread will always be present, and as modern readers, it’s interesting for us to learn about the science behind the flavor and take this cooking knowledge into the kitchen today.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. This article was written by Local History Librarian Laura Sperry. Sources available upon request. For more information, comments, or suggestions, contact NC Room staff at [email protected] or 828-884-1820.