Cornbread

The bread is a sponge for pot likker. That is the whole point of it.

Acid hits the soda and lifts it. It is leavening and flavour in one pour.

Melted into the hot skillet first, so the crust fries before it bakes.

The regional syrup, greener and sourer than molasses. Poured, not baked in.

Dry crumb against slick sauce; that contrast is the whole meal.

Drippings in the pan give the crust smoke it cannot get from an oven.

Starch and pulse, New Year, cheap. The pea broth softens the crumb.

Green heat cuts corn sugar; the cheese in between stops it burning.

Sharp aged fat against sweet crumb, and it browns on the skillet edge.

Contentious south of Kentucky. Floral sugar on savoury corn, and it works.

Same grain. The bread tells you what the mash bill was actually made from.

Bitter burnt sugar gives the crumb a floor the corn does not have.

Crumbled into oyster dressing: brine sits on sweet corn crumb properly.

Toasted crust pyrazines meet cocoa. Salt makes it read as a dessert.