Rhode Island Johnny Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Combine cornmeal and salt in a bowl.
Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until thoroughly scalded.
Thin the mixture with hot milk until it can drop easily from a spoon.
Fry
Heat a well-greased frying pan over moderate heat.
Pour the batter into the pan.
Cook until brown on one side.
Flip and brown the other side.
Add more grease if necessary.
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
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the cake and gives it its characteristic grainy texture and corn flavor.
- Boiling water
- Scalds the cornmeal, softening its starch so the batter cooks into a tender cake.
- Hot milk
- Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds richness and browning through milk sugars.
The step that matters
Thin the mixture with hot milk until it can drop easily from a spoon.. Cornmeal absorbs liquid as it sits and stiffens. If the batter is too thick it will not spread in the pan and cooks unevenly, while too thin a batter will not hold its shape and may spread too far.
“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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