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Dessert

Bermuda Johnny Cake

A simple cake made from flour, butter, salt, and milk, baked on a griddle until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bermuda Johnny Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Work in 1 ounce of butter with your fingers until crumbly.

  3. Add enough milk to form a paste-like consistency.

  4. Roll out the dough and spread the remaining butter on top, folding it over twice.

  5. Divide the dough into two pieces and roll each into a round shape.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium heat and bake the cakes until golden brown.

  2. Let each cake sit on the griddle for a short time after baking to crisp up.

  3. Tear open each cake and spread with butter before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the layers tender and rich as it is worked into the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it binds into a pliable dough.

The step that matters

Let each cake sit on the griddle to crisp up. Browning and crisping depend on dry surface heat over time. Moving the cake too early leaves the surface soft and pale, while leaving it too long can scorch it.

“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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