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Johnnie Cake
Mrs. H. Baird.
One pint of corn meal, one teacup of flour, two eggs, one pint of sweet milk, one tablespoon of molasses, one tablespoon of melted butter, a little salt, one teaspoon of soda, one teaspoon of cream of tartar; bake in square tins.
A straightforward 19th-century cornbread leavened with the soda-and-cream-of-tartar pairing that predates commercial baking powder. The original gives no oven temperature or time, so the notes below fill those gaps.
- Mix the leavening lastSoda and cream of tartar begin reacting the moment they meet the wet batter, and there is no second lift as with modern double-acting powder. Whisk them through the dry ingredients, combine, and get the tins into a preheated oven without delay.
- Corn mealPeriod corn meal was stone-ground and coarser than most supermarket meal. A medium or stone-ground yellow meal gives the right texture; fine degerminated meal makes a softer, cakier bread.
- MeasuresA pint here is two cups; a teacup is roughly three-quarters of a cup, though it varied by household. "Sweet milk" simply means fresh milk as opposed to soured or buttermilk.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. A hot oven of about 425F for 20 to 25 minutes suits this batter; the bread is done when the centre springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- The tins"Square tins" most likely means shallow square pans rather than loaf tins. An 8-inch square pan, well greased, suits this batter.
- YieldThe recipe says "tins", plural, and this quantity of batter suits two shallow square pans rather than one, cut into squares. It is best eaten warm; cornbread of this kind stales quickly.
Johnnycake is one of the oldest American breads, taken up by English colonists from Native cornmeal cookery in New England and the Middle Atlantic; the name is generally traced to "journey cake" or to "jonakin," though neither derivation is settled. The earliest versions were little more than meal, salt and water baked on a board or griddle. By the time The Home Cook Book was compiled in the 1870s, the plain field version had acquired eggs, milk, butter, molasses and chemical leavening, turning it into a tender oven cornbread. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar pair, rather than baking powder, suggests a household that still mixed its own leavening from two jars on the shelf, though commercial baking powder was already sold by then.