My grandparents' home in East Tennessee followed old Southern traditions. The dining table on special occasions, such as extended family gatherings, featured spoonbread as a side dish. Southern meals of my childhood were normally accompanied by cornbread as a side. (Cornbread in my part of the South was always made of yellow cornmeal with no flour and no sugar.) But spoonbread was an elevated replacement, made with white cornmeal, when the occasion demanded it. Basically, it's cornbread prepared as a soufflé.
Broadly speaking, there are two varieties of spoonbread: "wet" and "dry." The dry version I have learned to make. It follows the basic cornbread recipe, but involves a lot of energetic whipping of eggs. The baking of the resulting product must be timed precisely. The spoonbread remains in the oven as the family and guests are seated and the prayer is said, and then it is instantly whisked from oven to table and served, as it almost immediately begins to collapse with cooling -- hence the demand for precise timing.
Wet cornbread is made with buttermilk and has a more mushy texture. It looks less impressive but is more durable as a side dish and can be prepared in advance. The flavor is very much the same as the dry version, but with a different texture. And making it doesn't require such precise timing.
It's been many years, but I'm certain the spoonbread served at Grandmother's table was the wet variety. Although I've done my best to recreate it using various recipes, it's never come out quite like the real thing as I recall it. I've had good success with the dry version, but it's just not the same as Grandmothers.......
The photo shows a "dry" spoonbread of my own preparation, straight from the oven.