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Johnny Cake

A quick cornmeal cake made with egg, sugar, sour cream, baking soda, cornmeal, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Johnny Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg and brown sugar together until well combined.

  2. Stir in the sour cream and baking soda.

  3. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal and enough flour to create a batter.

  4. Pour the batter into a pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.

  2. Serve hot with butter, honey, or maple syrup.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning on the surface.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity helps activate the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Yellow cornmeal
Provides the coarse, grainy texture and body that thickens the batter.

The step that matters

Thicken the batter to the right consistency. Adding too much flour or cornmeal makes the batter stiff and dense, while too little leaves it runny and it may not set. Stir just until it forms a batter, since the baking soda reacts with the sour cream and the rise depends on the batter holding that gas.

“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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