Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
New English Johnny Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, salt, and sugar.
Scald the mixture with boiling water and let it sit for 30 minutes.
Thin the batter with milk until it reaches the consistency of griddle cake batter.
Cook and finish
Preheat a griddle until very hot and cook the batter like griddle cakes.
Once cooked, place the cakes in a tin and slip them into a very hot oven to puff.
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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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Granulated white cornmeal
- Forms the body of the cakes, giving them their grainy, sturdy structure.
- Boiling water
- Scalds the cornmeal, softening its starch so the batter cooks up tender.
- Milk
- Thins the batter to a griddle-cake consistency and adds moisture and browning.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds a little sweetness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
The step that matters
Scald the mixture with boiling water. Pouring boiling water over cornmeal gelatinizes its starch, so the batter becomes softer and less gritty. Using water that is not hot enough leaves the grains firm and the texture raw.
“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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