Cornbread And Milk Is The Classic Southern Snack You Need To Try

Mark Twain once said, "Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern [cornbread]" (per The New York Times). In the South, cornbread is a staple, often found on the table or as leftovers on the counter. This beloved bread is a source of pride, with each family boasting its own unique recipe, passed down through generations. The one unwavering rule? Southern cornbread never contains sugar.

For people of the South, cornbread evokes a deep nostalgia for grandmother's favorite cast iron dish steaming hot on the table and the rich aroma of freshly baked cornmeal. Perhaps an even more unexpected nostalgic twist on this savory treat is to enjoy it in a cup of milk. Crumbled cornbread in a glass of milk, sometimes called 'Crumble In,' is a Southern classic. The milk used can be buttermilk (which you can make at home by adding one ingredient to milk) or what Southerners call 'sweet milk' (which is a Southern way of saying regular milk). Though it may sound unusual to outsiders, this simple yet comforting dish, eaten with a spoon either hot or cold, remains a cherished tradition.

Cornbread and milk together aren't eaten as a full meal but are often enjoyed as a midday snack, an appetizer, or a side dish to other Southern staples like beans and collard greens. It's a simple and pleasurable way to savor your favorite cornbread recipe.

The history of cornbread in the South is as rich as its flavor. Before the first Europeans arrived, Native Americans had a long history of using corn called 'maize.' They had numerous recipes for cornmeal including maize cakes, a type of early cornbread, that utilized ground dried cornmeal, water, and salt. When European colonists arrived, the Native peoples introduced them to the grain, and the settlers began to adapt their own recipes to make cornmeal-based breads.

Europeans added ingredients like flour, baking powder, baking soda, eggs, and buttermilk based on baking techniques they knew from Europe, changing the cornmeal-based recipes they inherited from the Native Americans. Over time, these evolved into what we now know as Southern-style cornbread. As traditions blended, and corn's versatility secured cornbread its place as a favored staple in the Southern hearth, cornbread and milk emerged as another inventive and convenient way to enjoy the dish. To make cornbread and milk, all a farming family needed was access to cornmeal and a cow, making it easy to prepare even during hard times when other ingredients were scarce.

An array of cornbread recipes have survived the generations, giving you plenty of options to enjoy cornbread and milk. Even though Southerners consider cornbread with sugar to be cake masquerading as cornbread, even it would admittedly taste good crumbled into a cup of milk, especially with a drizzle of honey.

To get a true Southern experience of the dish, try choosing a cast iron skillet cornbread recipe as the base of your cornbread and milk. For a perfect for crumbling cornbread, pour the batter into a preheated cast iron skillet for cooking. The crispy edge created by the heat of the cast iron will give your cornbread a nice texture when broken up into a glass of milk.

To get creative when flavoring cornbread and milk, you can try mixing in green onions or wild leeks, which are also known as 'ramps.' Mix in the green tops, and you'll have a flavorful snack. Of course, sometimes all that is needed is a pinch of salt and black pepper for extra flavor.

You can eat it with cold cornbread straight from the fridge, or you can break it up into chunks and fry it in butter to heat it up first. However you decide to make this culinary heirloom, always make it in a glass (or a mason jar) — never a bowl, as if you're eating your morning cereal.