Basic Southern Cornbread https://www.thespruce.com/basic-buttermilk-cornbread-recipe-3054165

Basic Southern Cornbread Dressing & Variations https://www.thespruce.com/basic-cornbread-dressing-with-variations-3061402

These aren't quite how my family made these dishes, but they're recognizably close and I can work with them. Our family did not like so many spices, especially not so much sage it turns the dressing green. I still pass such versions up. In addition, they cooked a smaller turkey to shred the meat into the dressing as well as to make turkey stock out of the carcass for the dressing and to make gravy with.

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/08/why-southern-cornbread-shouldnt-have-sugar.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/dining/cornbread-dressing-thanksgiving.html

Midwest girl Kim Severson just wanted to learn how to make good cornbread dressing. Instead, she stepped on the third rail of Southern home cooking.

In a catastrophic hard-drive crash over a decade ago, I lost the recipe that my late mother had helped me find for cornbread dressing like she and my grandmother made. I still mourn that loss. But, I remember a lot about how it was made, and that is how I know that most recipes are closer or farther away from how they made it.

The first and second commandments of Southern Cornbread boil down to this: if any recipe for cornbread ever lists yellow cornmeal or sugar in it, holler “Go to hell!” as you throw it in the trash can. Two full generations of Ancestresses — mother, aunts, grandmothers, great-aunts, and second cousins — plus my own living generation of first cousins are done the second you dare blaspheme like that. Even those fine folks at Cook’s Illustrated committed that unpardonable sin. I learned that my cousins, aunts and I had all had the same reaction across states, miles, years, and generations when we saw their recipe for “Southern Cornbread” using yellow cornmeal: That ain’t gon’ happen, *turn page*.

Texas Cornbread Stuffing Like Grandma Used to Make

Okay. Maybe not like your grandma used to make. But definitely like my grandma made, because according to six-year-old me, my grandma was the best cook in the world. She was actually pretty incredible by anyone’s standards. She was old fashioned and Texan to the bone, and she didn’t mess around with fancy city ingredients like Crisco. When she made a pie, she used old fashioned lard out of the…

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/08/why-southern-cornbread-shouldnt-have-sugar.html

From the article:

Cornbread is just one of many traditional Southern foods that are difficult to experience today in their original form for the simple reason that today’s ingredients just aren’t the same. Buttermilk, rice, benne [sesame] seeds, watermelons, and even the whole hogs put on barbecue pits: each has changed in fundamental ways over the course of the 20th century.

This is a slightly modified version of my dad’s cornbread recipe. Thanks to my mom for sending me the recipe when I’d lost mine.

Ingredients:

1 egg 1.5 cups of buttermilk 1 tsp baking soda ½ cup of corn flour 1.5 cups yellow cornmeal 3 tsp baking powder 1 tsp. salt 3 tbsp soft shortening Butter or something else to grease pan with

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450° F (232° C).

2. Butter or otherwise grease square Pyrex pan 9x9x2 or similar size. (Doesn’t have to be Pyrex, but that’s what I use.)

3. Mix together dry ingredients

4. Beat eggs

5. Mix in wet ingredients, including eggs, one by one

6. Stir, but don’t over mix.

7. If you want to add hot peppers, do something like slice a bunch of jalapeños and mix them in to taste. If you don’t want hot peppers in your cornbread, ignore this step.

8. Put all mixed ingredients into baking pan.

9. Bake roughly 15-20 minutes. To avoid over drying it, bake it only as long as necessary, not a minute longer. It should be set until firm, but not overcooked.

10. Cut into squares and serve. Preferably with butter or margarine.

Note: You can apparently substitute boiled milk with added vinegar for the buttermilk, but I’ve never tried it. Try things like that at your own risk.

Additional note: This is Southern cornbread, so it doesn’t have sugar, that’s why I bothered getting the recipe. You can’t get this kind of cornbread where I live, everyone makes theirs with added sugar, and to someone used to Southern cornbread the Northern stuff tastes like corn-flavored cake. From what I’ve seen of feeding this cornbread to Northerners, it can be surprising both in terms of taste and texture. Sort of like Northern cornbread was to me the first time I tried it. (I’ve oome to finally accept Northern cornbread as existing, and as long as I don’t compare it to Southern cornbread, it’s fine. But if I have to compare them, Southern cornbreads win hands-down. I imagine a lot of Northerners feel the same in reverse.)