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Dessert

Minneapolis Johnny Cake

A quick baked cornmeal cake with pumpkin, sour milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pumpkin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,744 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Minneapolis 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.

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling water over the cornmeal and stir.

  2. Add sugar and pumpkin.

  3. Mix in sour milk with dissolved baking soda.

  4. Sift flour with baking powder and add to the mixture.

  5. Incorporate beaten eggs and seasoning.

  6. Beat briskly, then pour into a buttered tin.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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.

  1. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and grainy texture of the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Adds additional lift so the batter rises during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Pumpkin
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and tenderises the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk and then mixing promptly lets the gas form in the batter, so the cake rises well. Letting the batter stand too long loses this lift.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, sugar, cinnamon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, sugar, cinnamon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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