Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Johnny Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Mix the batter
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix sweet milk, buttermilk, salt, baking soda, and melted butter.
Gradually add cornmeal until the mixture can be rolled into a sheet ½ inch thick.
Spread the mixture onto a buttered tin or shallow pan.
Bake and serve
Bake for 40 minutes or until it begins to brown.
Baste with melted butter using a rag tied to a stick, repeating 5-6 times until brown and crisp.
Break into pieces and serve for luncheon or tea with sweet or buttermilk.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,674 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Milk + buttermilktop 41% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Buttermilk
- Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the cake and adds a tangy flavor.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce gas that leavens the cornmeal.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the main body of the cake, giving it structure and a grainy texture.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and richness, keeping the batter soft enough to spread and roll.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat and flavor, and browns and crisps the surface when basted during baking.
The step that matters
Basting with melted butter until brown and crisp. Butter fat carries heat to the surface and encourages browning and crispness. Repeated basting builds a crisp crust, so stopping early leaves the top pale and soft.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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