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Dessert

Alabama Johnny-cake

A cake made from rice, butter, eggs, and cornmeal baked over a fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Alabama Johnny-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cook the rice in water until tender.

  2. Stir in the butter and let it cool.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the cooled rice.

  4. Mix in the cornmeal until well combined.

Shape and cook

  1. Spread the mixture on a flat surface to a thickness of ½ inch.

  2. Bake by propping the board in front of a fire until one side is done, then turn it over to cook the other side.

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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked until tender, it adds moisture and a soft body to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it cooks.
Cornmeal
Provides the main structure and the grainy texture of the cake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and adding flavor.

The step that matters

Cooling the rice before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to hot rice can start to scramble them and make the batter uneven. Letting the butter-coated rice cool first keeps the eggs smooth and evenly mixed into the batter.

“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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