Cooking Corn Bread By Sight
By Aaron Freeman

My mother cooks hot water corn bread incorrectly. Oh sure she's been cooking it deliciously FOR sixty years but that's not the point. Her methodology is imprecise thus incorrect and as her thoroughly modern, college educated, son it is my duty to ameliorate her error.

My mother measures cooking ingredients by sight as did her mother and her mother before and maybe back to exponentially great grandmother of the Yoruba nation. It is a ridiculous way to prepare food. Getting a recipe from my mother is like: "You take some corn meal, a little salt." "But M'dere, how much corn meal?" "It depends on how much you're making."

I am a science reporter. I eat quaint folk customs for lunch. I know that empiricism and reproducibility are essential components of any successful formula.

Furthermore, if African American culture, in real life, Southern, rural culture is to survive; if its tradition are to be preserved then future generations need to be able to cook its recipes. Those cooks of the future will have no idea what to do with the instruction "Put in enough salt to give the bread a little flavor but not too much." They will shake their heads and munch astro-biscuits.
Despite the unassailable logic of my position my mother would not, claimed she could not write down her recipe for hot-water cornbread. So I figured it out myself.

Through careful remembrance of many years of watching her do it and a process of systematic experimentation I defined the ingredient limits of successful hot water cornbread. THEY are: one cup of corn meal, one tablespoon of salt; one egg, half a teaspoon of baking powder and three quarters of a cup of boiling hot water. Simplicity itself. I HAd single-handedly dragged hot water cornbread into the twenty first century. For the first time our genes had produced an individual, me, with the intellect and organization to immortalize a crucial leaf on our family's culinary tree.

I marveled at how many generations of Freemans had sat at their tables saying, "You know Birtie, you ought to write that hot water corn bread recipe down." To which Birtie would reply, "Now Jesse you know we're just illiterate country nigroes. We'll have to wait for some future generation of erudite technically proficient offspring to immortalize our recipe."

I printed a copy of the recipe, at the highest quality resolution, laminated it and gave it to my mother... signed. I posted a copy on the refrigerator door. I emailed copies to my cousins.

The recipe was godsend. I owned hot water cornbread. Every piece I fried up was perfect, just like my mother's, every time. When delighted guests requested the recipe, I offhandedly replied, "I'll email it to ya."
Then one day I'm making dinner, mustard greens in soy sauce, honey and sherry, a perfect match for hot water corn bread. I was going to make ONLY six pieces, enough for the immediate family. The measuring cup was unusable because earlier in the day one of our daughters had micro waved an egg in it. No biggie... had the microwave not been set to cook for twenty minutes. By the time I noticed the smell the measuring cup was coated with a layer of burned albumin with the density of Kevlar.

I picked up a saucepan and the box of corn meal. I poured some meal into the pan, shook it to level the meal and thought, "This is about a cup." I have no excuse for not measuring the salt and baking powder I just didn't.

The cornbread was fine, as always.

Next meal of course I returned to real, cup, spoon measurement. But about a week later the measuring cup was dirty when I was ready to cook, no encrusted Kevlar, but cleaning it was a bit too much trouble so I... measured by sight. Slowly, over the course of a few months I slid into down-home measurement of down-home recipes. As long as I know the depth of the cornbread in the sauce pan I can always visually estimate the proper amount of salt and when that's known the amount of baking powder becomes obvious then you just put in enough hot water to make the batter you know, the right consistency, like the way it should be.

I still have the recipe somewhere on my hard drive... I think.

Oscar Wilde said all women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy, no man does, that's theirs... Oscar Wilde would have understood about the corn bread.

© 2002 Aaron Freeman