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Aunt Jennie's Johnny Cake
One cup each sweet milk and buttermilk, one tea-spoon each salt and soda, one table-spoon melted butter. Mix with enough meal to roll into a sheet half an inch thick. Spread on a clean, sweet board, set before fire at an angle that will prevent cake slipping off, until it hardens, then stand upright. Baste often with butter until nicely crisped.
A hearth recipe written for an open fire and a hardwood plank. The batter itself is straightforward; everything unfamiliar is in the baking method.
- The hinge: it is baked by radiant heat, not in a panThe dough is pressed onto a board and propped at an angle facing the fire, so one side sets and crisps while the butter bastes down it. Without a live fire, bake the sheet on a heavy preheated baking sheet or cast-iron griddle at 425F for about 20-25 minutes, brushing with melted butter two or three times, and finish a minute under the broiler for the crust the original is after.
- "Meal" means cornmealIn a Southern book of this period most likely white, stone-ground meal, though the recipe specifies nothing beyond "meal." Yellow meal will work and simply tastes different. No wheat flour is called for.
- How much meal"Enough to roll into a sheet" is unquantified; expect to need somewhere in the region of three to four cups for the two cups of liquid given, since cornmeals vary widely in absorbency. Add it gradually until the dough is stiff enough to pat out without spreading.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk, named to distinguish it from the buttermilk in the same line. Both are used, and the buttermilk is what the soda reacts with.
- Soda and saltOne teaspoon of soda to one cup of buttermilk is generous by modern practice; three-quarters of a teaspoon gives a cleaner taste. The teaspoon of salt is reasonable for an unsweetened meal bread of this size, though the recipe never says how much meal that is.
- The boardA "clean, sweet" board is an untreated hardwood plank kept free of soap and grease. Anyone reproducing this over a fire should use plain oak, hickory or maple, never plywood, treated lumber or anything with a finish on it.
- No sugar, no eggsThis is a bread, not a cake in the modern sense. Expect something dense and crisp-edged, meant to be broken up and eaten hot with butter alongside a meal.
- YieldA sheet roughly 9 by 12 inches, serving six as a bread. It is best within the hour and stales quickly.
Johnnycake runs the length of American cornbread history, from New England to the Gulf, and the name is generally traced either to "journey cake" or to "jonakin"; neither derivation is settled. Baking dough on a board propped before the fire is a close relative of the hoecake and the ashcake, though board-baking was not exclusively Southern -- the johnnycake board is well attested in New England too. The Dixie Cook Book, published in the 1880s, carried recipes under contributors' names, and the "Aunt" prefix follows a naming convention of the period that was applied both to relatives and to older Black cooks; the actual authorship behind such attributions is usually unrecoverable.