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Johnny Cake (C sour milk Little salt t soda)
1 C sour milk Little salt 1 t soda 2 T melted butter 1/2 C malosses 1½ C corn meal 1 egg 1/2 C flour Bake in shallow pan.
Christina D. Kern. 1 C yellow corn meal 1/2 C flour (Club House) ½ C sugar 14 t salt
A plain sour-milk cornbread, typical of a church-supper collection: the contributor assumed you knew the oven and the pan. The transcription has also run a second, incomplete johnny cake formula onto the end of the first.
- Two recipes, not oneEverything from "1 C yellow corn meal" onward belongs to a separate entry (marked "Club House") that was printed without its liquid, fat or leavening. Make only Christina Kern's version above it; the fragment cannot be completed without guessing.
- The fractions"14 t salt" is a broken ¼ teaspoon, and "½ C malosses" is molasses. In the first recipe the salt is simply "a little" — about ½ teaspoon is right for this quantity of meal.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here means naturally clabbered raw milk, acidic enough to react with the teaspoon of soda. Modern pasteurised milk spoils rather than sours; use buttermilk cup for cup, or a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- CornmealPeriod cornmeal was stone-ground and coarser than standard degerminated supermarket meal. Medium-grind gives a closer texture; fine meal makes a softer, more cake-like crumb.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the book assumed one. Cornbread of this kind wants a hot oven, 400-425F, for about 20-25 minutes in a shallow pan.
- The pan"Shallow pan" means an 8-inch square or a 9-inch round, greased and preheated if you want a crisp bottom. The batter is thin enough to pour and should sit no more than an inch deep, or the centre stays wet.
- Working orderMix the soda into the sour milk and add it last, then get the batter into the oven promptly — the lift comes chiefly from that single acid-base reaction and it begins fading within minutes.
- YieldOne 8-inch pan, cut into nine squares. Best warm; cornbread of this kind stales fast and is worth splitting and toasting the next day.
Johnny cake is one of the oldest names in American cookery, applied at various times to a griddle-baked cornmeal flatbread and, as here, to a soft baked cornbread in a pan. The name is generally traced to "journey cake," though that etymology is traditional rather than settled; "jonakin" and similar spellings appear in early New England sources. This version sits well away from the hearth-baked Rhode Island type: softened with wheat flour and darkened with molasses. The reliance on sour milk and soda points to a kitchen where milk came from a cow rather than a shop, and nothing was thrown out for turning.