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Johnny Cake

A thick Indian meal cake cooked on a griddle and finished in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine 2 cups Indian meal, 1 heaping teaspoon sugar, and ¼ teaspoon salt in a bowl.

  2. Add enough scalding water or scalded sweet milk to form a thick mixture that holds its shape.

  3. Let the mixture stand for at least 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a griddle with butter.

  2. Shape the mixture into a cake about ½ inch thick. Smooth the surface.

  3. Cook on the griddle until nicely browned.

  4. Before flipping, place a small piece of butter on top to prevent scorching.

  5. Flip the cake and cook the other side until browned.

  6. Transfer the cake to a hot oven to finish crisping, or bake entirely in the oven.

  7. Serve hot.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Indian meal
Forms the body of the cake and sets into a firm, sturdy crumb when cooked.
Scalding water or scalded sweet milk
Hydrates and gelatinizes the meal so the mixture holds its shape and cooks through.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and prevents the surface from scorching on the griddle.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for at least 30 minutes. Resting lets the scalded cornmeal absorb liquid fully and swell, so the batter thickens and holds its shape. Shaping or cooking too early can leave a crumbly, weak cake.

“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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