[2020] Glass is a crucial ingredient of corn bread?

Originally posted by zybourne: No, we mustn’t mention this. The devs will just put even more empty jars in loot as a way to counteract complaints.

But I’ve heard it’s a game limitation, with how campfires and cooking recipes work.

It's a limitation with crafting recipes from the ground up, not just cooking. Recipes cannot output more than one result. So either you get the Corn Bread, Or you get the glass jar.

There are workarounds, the common sense mod for example makes it so you get the glass jar back when you eat it, similar to getting an empty bottle from drinking, or an empty can from eating canned food.

But the devs just don't consider it to be worth the trouble to go change those things at this time given the prolific nature of glass jars, and that you can literally make thousands of them with a 15 minute trip to the desert with even a stone shovel. They have other things to focus on, so thats what they're doing.. They'll likely do a balance and correction pass over things like this in beta.