Name: Johnny Cake
Ingredients: ¼ cup sugar; 1 tablespoon melted butter; 1 egg; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup milk; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1 cup flour; ½ cup yellow cornmeal

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix together the sugar, melted butter, egg, salt, and milk.
In another bowl, sift the baking powder with the flour and cornmeal.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into a coffee cake pan and bake for 20 minutes.
Serve hot with butter or maple syrup.

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.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour: Provides the main structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns light.
Yellow cornmeal: Adds a coarser texture and a slightly grainy bite to the cake.
Milk: Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter can set.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

“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.