My son came to visit recently, and while he was here, an old family debate surfaced in our kitchen and on Facebook.
As I’ve mentioned before, my son likes to cook. As he was planning his trip home, he told me he would be happy to fix some meals for us—and he specifically mentioned making spoon bread, an old family dish that I rarely make any more. I do not care for cooking, so I took him up on his offer, and he made us spoon bread for dinner one evening. (I made the other dishes—tilapia, asparagus, and a salad. The spoon bread was our starch.)
Spoon bread, for those not familiar with it, is a cornmeal soufflé. It’s like cornmeal mush or polenta. Before it is cooked, the cornmeal batter is about the consistency of thick pancake batter, and then egg whites are folded in to make the dish rise in the oven. You have to eat it straight out of the oven, because it collapses as soon as it starts to cool—like a popover. It still tastes good after it collapses, but it loses its light fluffiness.
Spoon bread is an old Southern dish. My husband’s Missouri family hails several generations back from Virginia, and that could be where they came to know the dish. I’d never eaten spoon bread until I married into the family.
There have been two family recipes for spoon bread floating around kitchens for the last several generations. Both were published in the Arrow Rock Cook Book, back around 1983. One recipe was my mother-in-law’s. And the other was her mother’s.
The version of the Arrow Rock Cook Book we have is the Third Printing, from 1975. My mother-in-law gave it to me in September 1977, shortly before I married her son. She had checked a number of the recipes with a red felt-tipped pen—these were the recipes she vouched for.
Although my mother-in-law had her own spoon bread recipe in the cookbook, she told me once that her mother’s recipe was better. So that’s the one I always made.
But my son made his grandmother’s recipe. It was excellent.
And when I posted the picture of what he made on Facebook, cousins came out of the woodwork:
“Whose recipe did he use?” one cousin asked. I confessed that Son had used his grandmother’s recipe.
Another said, “Our grandmother [not my mother-in-law, but her mother] had an amazing recipe that my sister has been re-creating.” No need to recreate, when the recipe was published, I thought. Both recipes have been published.
Her sister weighed in with, “Aunt Virginia’s [meaning my mother-in-law’s] recipe is better. Glad that’s the one he used.”
So which is better? My mother-in-law’s or her mother’s—there are apparently strong votes for both.
Here are both recipes. You decide which you like best. Whichever recipe you use, serve it hot with lots of butter.
As for me, I think I might switch my allegiance to my mother-in-law’s recipe. It has more sugar in it.
Spoon Bread Recipe from Virginia Hupp [my mother-in-law]:
Spoon Bread Recipe from Margaret Parks [my husband’s grandmother]:
Do you have recipes that cause dissension in your family?
