Name: Johnny Cake
Ingredients: corn meal; coarse sea salt; milk; thick cream

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Johnny Cake

Ingredients

corn meal
coarse sea salt
milk
thick cream

Directions

Scald a sufficient quantity of corn meal.
Add a little coarse sea salt.
Mix with milk until the mixture can be shaped into a flat cake.
Cover the cake with a little thick cream to prevent burning.
Bake before an open fire.

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.

Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).