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Johnny Cakes

A batter of sour milk, salt, meal, baking soda, and optional flour, baked into a stiff cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and tea work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 738 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Johnny Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, salt, sifted meal, dissolved saleratus, and flour to form a stiff batter.

  2. Butter a pan and pour the batter into it.

  3. For a tea variation, mix in molasses, allspice, and cream or shortening before baking.

  4. Bake for nearly 1 hour.

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. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + allspicetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds tang.
Sifted meal
Forms the body of the batter, giving the cakes their structure as it sets in the oven.
Dissolved saleratus (baking soda)
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and dark color in the tea variation.

The step that matters

Stiff batter consistency. Mix the batter only until it is stiff and evenly combined. The soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the sour milk, so the batter should go into the pan and oven without long delay to keep the gas trapped for a good rise.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, molasses, tea, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, molasses, tea, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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