Historically, cornbread in the American South was made from white cornmeal, buttermilk, an egg, a little fat (often bacon drippings) and a teaspoon of salt. That is the whole recipe. There was no sugar in it. Sugar was expensive and rare; it went into pies and special occasion cakes, not into the daily bread that anchored a plate of beans and greens.
The sweet cornbread tradition that dominates the rest of the country came mostly from the North, where yellow cornmeal was more common and where cornbread sat somewhere between a side dish and a dessert. Both traditions are valid. But they are not the same dish, and conflating them has led to a lot of dry, sweet, cake-like pans being passed off as cornbread on plates that needed something else entirely.
Our position at Hard Knocks: when cornbread is the platform for collard greens or chili or a bowl of beans, it should be savory. Bake it in a smoking hot cast iron skillet, let the bottom go almost too dark, and split it open with butter melting into the crumb. If you want a sweet pan, call it corn cake, call it skillet cake, call it whatever you like, but stop fighting the people who know what cornbread is supposed to taste like.
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