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Alabama Johnny-Cake
Cook a pint of rice till tender, add a table-spoon butter; when cold add two beaten eggs and one pint meal, and when mixed spread on an oaken board and bake by tipping the board up before the fireplace. When done on one side turn over. The dough should be spread half an inch thick.
A hearth-baked cornbread stiffened with cooked rice, meant to be propped on a plank before an open fire. Everything about it can be reproduced in a hot skillet or oven; the only real decisions are how much rice and how much salt.
- The pint of riceRead literally, this is a pint of raw rice — about two cups, which cooks up to six cups or more, far more than a pint of meal can carry. Unless you want a rice cake bound with a little meal, treat it as roughly two cups of cooked rice, cooled and broken up with a fork.
- "Meal" means cornmealIn American books of this period, unqualified "meal" generally means Indian meal, that is, cornmeal. A pint is about two cups; fine or medium grind gives a smoother batter than modern coarse stone-ground.
- Salt is assumedNineteenth-century books frequently omit salt from ingredient lists. There is none anywhere in this recipe; add about a teaspoon somewhere, or the cake tastes of nothing.
- No leavening, by designThere is no soda, no baking powder and no milk. The two eggs are the only lift, so expect a dense, close-textured cake rather than a risen bread. Do not add baking powder and expect the same thing.
- The boardAn oaken johnnycake board was a smooth plank angled toward the fire so the cake baked by radiant heat. Nearest modern equivalent: a well-greased heavy cast-iron skillet over medium heat, or a greased sheet pan in a hot oven, 425F.
- Half an inch, and turn itThe stated thickness is the hinge. Spread it thicker and the center stays wet while the outside sets. In a skillet, give it 8 to 10 minutes a side until deeply browned; a thin metal spatula and a plate make the flip manageable.
- Consistency before spreadingThe mixture should be a stiff, spreadable paste, not a pourable batter — stiff enough that it would have clung to a tilted board. If the rice was wet, add meal a spoonful at a time.
- YieldEnough for one large cake or two smaller ones at the stated half-inch thickness; serves four or so at breakfast. Best eaten hot with butter, as it turns leaden once cold.
Johnny-cake is the New England and Mid-Atlantic name for a plain cornmeal griddle or hearth cake, and the word is generally traced either to "journey cake" or to a corruption of "jonakin" — the etymology has been argued over since the eighteenth century and is not settled. The board-baking method described here is the older technique: a smooth oak plank propped at an angle before the coals so the cake cooked by radiant heat rather than contact. Adding cooked rice to the meal is associated with the South, where rice was cheap and plentiful, and it produces a moister, heavier cake — hence the "Alabama" in the title, in an Ohio book published in 1877 that collected contributed recipes from across the country. Buckeye Cookery appeared as cast-iron stoves were displacing open-hearth cooking, so a recipe still calling for a board before the fireplace was already looking backward.