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Corn Johnny-Cakes

Corn Johnny-Cakes are cornmeal cakes cooked on a griddle and finished in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Corn Johnny-Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a pan, combine cornmeal and salt.

  2. Pour enough boiling water over the mixture to form a stiff batter that allows a spoon to stand upright.

Shape and cook

  1. Heat and grease a griddle.

  2. Dip your hands in cold water and form the dough into cakes about ½ inch thick.

  3. Place the cakes on the griddle and cook until half-baked, then turn to cook the other side.

  4. Once baked, place the cakes on a tin plate and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cakes and sets into a firm, starchy crumb when cooked.
Boiling water
Hydrates and gelatinizes the cornmeal so it binds into a shapeable dough.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling water into the cornmeal. The batter must be stiff enough to hold its shape. Too little water leaves the cornmeal dry and crumbly, while too much makes the cakes slack and hard to turn on the griddle.

“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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