Spoonbread is, without question, the lightest, richest, and most elegant of all Southern cornmeal dishes, a custardlike, versatile miracle that approaches the texture of a soufflé and is as appropriate at breakfast with fried country ham and red-eye gravy as on the grandest dinner table or buffet. Of course, Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky all lay claim to the dish, but since history records an Indian porridge introduced to the first Virginia settlers called suppone, which appears to be the ancestral source of spoonbread, perhaps that state deserves the most credit. (In any case, the dish was not refined with butter, milk, and eggs till well into the nineteenth century.) Depending on the region, spoonbread can be enhanced with everything from cheese to bacon or ham to dainty vegetables, but in its most pristine form, there can be no doubt that it’s one of the country’s (indeed the world’s) most distinctive and delicious culinary creations. And, yes, the dish is so soft that it can be and often is eaten with a spoon.