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Alabama Johnny-cake

A cake made from rice, cornmeal, and other ingredients, baked on a board over a fireplace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Alabama Johnny-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cook the rice in water until tender.

  2. Add the butter to the rice and let it cool.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs and cornmeal until well combined.

Bake

  1. Spread the mixture on an oaken board, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Bake by tipping the board up before the fireplace.

  3. When one side is done, 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a cohesive cake.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and structure of the cake.
Rice
Adds moisture and a tender, soft texture to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Turning the cake over. Heat reaches the board unevenly, so one side browns faster. Turning it once that side is done lets the other side cook through without scorching.

“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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