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 ↓
Johnnie 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).
In a large bowl, combine corn meal, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, sweet milk, molasses, and melted butter.
Make and bake the batter
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Pour the batter into square tins.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Corn meal
- Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its coarse, grainy texture.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and molasses to lift the batter.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper colour to the cake.
- Sweet milk
- Hydrates the dry ingredients and gives the batter its liquid base.
The step that matters
Mix until just combined. Once the wet and dry ingredients meet, the baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting. Overmixing develops gluten from the flour and knocks out gas, which can leave the cake dense and tough.
“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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