Cornbread is a traditional staple of rural cuisine in the United States of America, especially in the US South. A typical contemporary northern US cornbread recipe contains half wheat flour, half cornmeal, milk, eggs, leavener and salt, resulting in a bread that is somewhat lighter and cakier than its more traditional southern counterpart, which is normally made from a mixture of cornmeal, buttermilk, salt, eggs, lard or bacon fat, and leavener. This bread will tend to be denser, meant more as an accompaniment than as a bread meant to stand on its own.
While various colors of cornmeal are used, the preference in the north tends to be for yellow cornmeal, whereas the south is heavily biased towards white cornmeal.