Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Johnny Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix sweet milk, buttermilk, salt, baking soda, and melted butter.
Gradually add cornmeal until the mixture can be rolled into a sheet ½ inch thick.
Bake and serve
Spread the mixture onto a buttered baking tin or shallow pan.
Bake for 40 minutes, basting with melted butter every 8 minutes until brown and crisp.
Break apart to serve instead of cutting.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,674 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Milk + buttermilktop 41% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Buttermilk
- Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to lift the cornbread and tenderise its crumb.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce carbon dioxide, helping the bread rise.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the bread, giving it its structure and grainy texture.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for flavour and richness, and helps the surface brown and crisp.
- Sweet milk
- Supplies moisture and liquid so the batter can be mixed and rolled into a sheet.
The step that matters
Basting with melted butter during baking. Brushing the surface with fat every 8 minutes keeps it from drying out and helps it brown and crisp evenly. Skipping the basting can leave the top pale and dry.
“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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