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Breakfast

Breakfast Johnny Cake

A simple cornmeal cake made with cornmeal, wheat flour, cornstarch, salt, water or milk, egg, baking soda, brown sugar, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Breakfast Johnny Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the cornmeal, wheat flour, cornstarch, salt, and enough water (or milk) to wet thoroughly in a bowl and let sit overnight.

Bake

  1. In the morning, add the egg, baking soda, brown sugar, and melted butter to the mixture, then beat well and bake immediately.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Fine yellow cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its gritty, corn-forward texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as the cake sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown during baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after beating. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the liquid and acid in the batter. Waiting lets that gas escape, so the cake rises less and can turn flat and dense.

“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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