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 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Beat the eggs until very light.
Add the cornmeal and beat until light.
Mix in the melted butter and the milk or water.
If using buttermilk, dissolve the baking soda in 2 tablespoons of boiling water before adding.
Make a thick batter that can be spread into cakes about ½ inch thick and 5 inches in diameter.
Bake
Place the cakes in buttered tins and bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for about 30 minutes, brushing with melted butter every 5-6 minutes.
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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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Beaten until light, they add structure and lift to the batter.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the cakes, giving them their grainy, sturdy texture.
- Milk or buttermilk
- Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture; buttermilk's acidity reacts with the baking soda.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and browns the cakes as they bake.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
The step that matters
Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce lift. Dissolving it in boiling water first spreads it evenly through the batter, so the cakes rise uniformly rather than in patches.
“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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