Indian-meal Cake — Johnny Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make and shape the dough
Stir the coarse-ground Indian meal into the boiling water until a stiff dough forms.
Mold the dough into a cake about ¾ inch thick.
Bake
Bake the cake on a board before the fire, or in a stove or range until cooked through.
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
- Coarse-ground indian meal
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set into a firm dough.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the meal and gelatinizes its starch so the dough holds its shape.
The step that matters
Stirring the meal into the boiling water. Adding the meal to boiling water lets the starch swell and set quickly, forming a stiff dough without lumps of dry meal. Stirring until smooth keeps the texture even through baking.
“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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