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Johnnie Cake
One cup of sugar, one egg, three tablespoons of shortening, one cup of meal, two cups of flour, one teaspoon of salt, three teaspoons of baking powder, water enough to stiffen it up like a cake.
— Mrs. M. T. Brewer
A community-cookbook cornbread written for a cook who already knew what the batter should look like. The gaps are the liquid quantity, the pan and the oven, none of which are stated.
- Meal means cornmealIn American receipts of this period "meal" without qualification is yellow or white cornmeal, not oatmeal. A medium grind gives the texture the recipe expects; stone-ground will be a little coarser and thirstier.
- ShorteningThree tablespoons of shortening here means lard, butter or a solid vegetable fat, melted and beaten in.
- The liquid is genuinely unspecified"Water enough to stiffen it up like a cake" is the one real gap. For three cups of dry ingredients expect somewhere near 1 to 1 1/4 cups, added gradually until the batter drops thickly from the spoon rather than pours. Milk or buttermilk can be substituted for a softer crumb, though the receipt as written calls for water.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Cornbreads of this style bake at 400-425F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top springs back and a straw comes out clean. Lower and slower gives a pale, dry result.
- PanA greased 8- or 9-inch square pan, or a 10-inch cast-iron skillet preheated with a little fat in it, which will give a crisp underside.
- Leavening and saltThree teaspoons of baking powder for three cups of dry ingredients works out to a teaspoon per cup, which is within the normal range. A full teaspoon of salt is correct for this sweetness level, though it reads high if you are used to unsalted quick breads.
- It is a sweet cakeA cup of sugar to one cup of meal and two of flour makes this a Northern-style sweet johnnycake, closer to cake than to a Southern skillet cornbread. Serve it warm with butter; it will not do as a savoury accompaniment.
- YieldAbout nine generous squares, best the day it is baked.
The name johnnycake is old and its origin is disputed: it is variously traced to "journey cake", to "Shawnee cake", and to a simple corruption of Jonakin or jonny-cake, with none of these firmly documented. The earliest versions were nothing like this one, being thin batters of cornmeal, salt and water baked on a board or griddle. By the late nineteenth century, Northern cooks with reliable ranges, cheap wheat flour and chemical baking powder had rebuilt the dish as a sweet loaf, and the cornmeal became the flavouring rather than the whole substance. That progression is written plainly into Mrs. Brewer's proportions, where wheat flour outweighs meal two to one and sugar equals the meal cup for cup. The signed attribution is typical of a village receipt collection, where recipes circulated as household property and were printed under the name of the woman who contributed them.