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Johnny Cakes

A cornmeal flatbread made with cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, yeast, salt, and milk, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Johnny Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal and wheat flour.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, yeast, salt, and milk to the mixture. Stir until well combined.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown on both sides.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and the grainy, corn-flavoured structure of the cakes.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming proteins that help bind the batter and hold the cakes together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking, giving the cakes structure and richness.
Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that lightens the cakes and adds a mild tang.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and flour, adding moisture and helping browning through its milk sugars.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown on both sides. A hot griddle sets the outside quickly so the cakes brown evenly and hold their shape. If the griddle is too cool, the batter spreads and absorbs fat, leaving pale, soggy cakes that may not cook through.

“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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