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Bread

Indian Johnny, or Hoe-cake

A simple cake made from yellow meal and salt, baked after mixing with boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By E. Putnam · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Indian Johnny, or Hoe-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meal

  1. Take a quart of fine yellow meal and one teaspoonful of salt.

  2. Turn on boiling water enough to just wet the meal.

Mix and spread

  1. Stir the mixture well.

  2. Let it cool a little.

  3. Wet your hands in cold water, mix the mixture again.

  4. Spread the mixture on a tin sheet very thin.

Bake

  1. Bake it in the oven or before the fire for about half an hour.

By E. Putnam. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Fine yellow meal
Forms the bulk of the bread; hot water softens its starch so the mixture holds together.

The step that matters

Turn on boiling water enough to just wet the meal.. Too much water makes a sticky mass that will not spread thin, while too little leaves crumbly meal that will not bind. Hot water swells the starch in the cornmeal, so the amount needs to be just enough to hold it together.

“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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