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Johnny Cake (No. 1)
1 cup sour milk ½ cup molasses 1 egg Pinch of salt ⅓ cup of melted lard 1 cup Indian meal 2 cups Five Roses flour 1 teaspoon soda.
Bake in hot oven.
A quick bread from the era when sour milk, molasses and lard were what a kitchen had on hand. The original gives no pan, no time and no yield, so those need filling in.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal; in books of this period it usually means a fine to medium grind, though both yellow and white meal were sold under the name. Coarse stone-ground meal will make a grittier cake unless you scald it first with a little of the milk.
- Sour milk and sodaThe acidity of genuine soured raw milk is what lifts the teaspoon of soda. Buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in; failing that, a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes will do it. Pasteurised milk left to sit on the counter is not the same thing and is not worth the risk.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperature. "Hot oven" in cookery of this period is generally taken as somewhere in the 400-425F range. For a batter carrying half a cup of molasses, which browns fast, the lower end is the safer choice.
- Pan and timeAn 8-inch square pan or a 9-inch round, greased, gives a cake about an inch and a half thick that bakes in 25 to 30 minutes. The same batter fills about a dozen gem pans in 15 to 18 minutes.
- LardA third of a cup of melted lard gives a tender, slightly savoury crumb. Melted butter or a neutral oil works; the texture goes marginally less short with oil.
- ConsistencyThree cups of dry against a cup of sour milk and half a cup of molasses, plus the egg and the melted lard, makes a thick batter -- somewhere between pourable and spoonable. Spread it into the pan with the back of a spoon if it will not level itself. If it seems unworkably stiff, a few tablespoons more sour milk is within the spirit of the recipe.
- MolassesUse table or fancy molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than what the book intended. It also means the cake is sweet enough to eat plain, warm, with butter.
- YieldNine generous squares, best the day it is baked.
Johnny cake is one of the oldest continuously made corn breads in North America, and the name has been argued over for two centuries: it is variously traced to "journey cake", to "jonakin", and to a corruption of Shawnee, none of it settled. What is clear is the dividing line it marks. The plain New England johnnycake is cornmeal, water or milk and salt, cooked on a griddle; this Five Roses version has crossed over into the leavened tea-bread family, with wheat flour outnumbering the corn two to one, molasses for sweetness and soda for lift. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, and recipes like this one, which quietly shift the balance from cornmeal toward wheat, served the mill as much as the cook.