Why it works: Buttermilk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,986 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
New-england Johnny Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Combine sour buttermilk and egg in a bowl, beating the egg well before adding it.
Stir in salt and enough cornmeal to make a thin batter, checking that it is thin enough to pour easily.
Dissolve baking soda in a little warm water and mix it into the batter.
Bake
Pour the batter into shallow pans and bake until light and cooked through.
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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Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,986 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
- Sour buttermilk
- Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
- Egg
- Binds the batter and helps give the cake its structure as it cooks.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour buttermilk's acid to release gas, which makes the cake rise and turn light.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the main body of the cake, giving it its grainy texture and structure.
The step that matters
Dissolving the baking soda and mixing it in. Baking soda only lifts the batter when it meets acid, and the sour buttermilk provides that acid. Dissolving it fully in warm water and mixing it evenly through the batter spreads the reaction throughout, so the cake rises uniformly instead of forming dense or uneven patches.
“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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