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Dessert

Steamed Johnny Cake

A steamed cornmeal cake made with eggs, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Johnny Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Add cornmeal gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming dish.

  2. Steam for 1.5 hours.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Egg + molassestop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give it structure as they set during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and structure of the cake as it thickens.

The step that matters

Add the cornmeal gradually. Cornmeal absorbs liquid and thickens the batter as you add it. Adding it slowly lets you stop at a stiff batter; too much makes the cake dry and dense, while too little leaves it loose and wet.

“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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