john·ny·cake

(jŏn′ē-kāk′)

n. New England & Upper Midwest

Cornmeal bread usually shaped into a flat cake and baked or fried on a griddle. Also called regionally ashcake, batter bread, battercake, corn cake, cornpone, hoecake, journey cake, pone, Shawnee cake.

[Perhaps alteration (influenced by the name Johnny + and cake) of earlier jonakin; perhaps akin to English dialectal (Lancashire) jannock, flat loaf of oaten bread, perhaps from Jan, variant of the name John.]

Our Living Language When the Native Americans showed the Pilgrims how to cook with maize, they must have taught them to make johnnycake, a dense cornmeal bread whose thick batter is shaped into a flat cake and baked or fried on a griddle. Johnnycake, also called journey cake and Shawnee cake, is a New England specialty, especially in Rhode Island, where johnnycakes are often made of white Indian corn called flint corn. Outside New England the name johnnycake is best known in the Upper Midwest, but the food itself is most popular in the South and South Midland states, where it is known as ashcake, batter bread, battercake, corn cake, cornpone, or hoecake.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

john•ny•cake

(ˈdʒɒn iˌkeɪk)

n. Northern U.S.

a flat cake or bread made with cornmeal, usu. cooked on a griddle.

[1730–40, Amer.; probably by folk etym. from earlier jonakin, of obscure orig.]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

johnnycake - cornbread usually cooked pancake-style on a griddle (chiefly New England)

johnny cake, journey cake

cornbread - bread made primarily of cornmeal

hoecake - thin usually unleavened johnnycake made of cornmeal; originally baked on the blade of a hoe over an open fire (southern)

Shawnee cake - form of johnnycake

New England - a region of northeastern United States comprising Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Connecticut

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

The whole mash should be salted to taste and baked as brown as Johnnycake in an ordinary oven.

Chicken & the egg: incubators eased work of farm wife's chore

Aptly summarised by Tina Hanlon as "Runaway Cakes and Gingerbread Boys," the stories of the runaway gingerbread man or johnnycake typically feature a series of animals, ending with the fox who outsmarts the cake-boy and eats him.

Run, run as fast as you can: "the boy with the bread" in The Hunger Games

What they gained from that search was confirmation rather than new leads." (157) The court thus had "no doubt" that "even without any inspection of the interior of the Johnnycake farm buildings," investigators nonetheless had ample probable cause "for the issuance of a warrant to search and seize any evidence of a cocaine manufacturing operation at Johnnycake farm." (158)

The fatal flaws of the "sneak and peek" statute and how to fix it

Add butter, heat until it sizzles, and add johnnycake mixture to pan.

Fresh Corn Johnnycakes

Once used as a homemade substitute for cane sugar, maple sugar and maple syrup have been mainstays of North Country cooking, found in local recipes for maple-glazed ham, maple Johnnycake (see recipe on p.

From the editor

When the bar first opened, Ziggy's hosted a benefit for the local Boys & Girl's Club, which included a johnnycake eating contest.

An Island Opportunity

Imagine a chilled black oblong platter on which are seated two perfect little canapes, each one featuring a black swoosh of excellent, fine-grain sturgeon caviar (farmed by Sarasota's own Mote Marine) on a snowy pillow of creme fraiche atop a little buckwheat blini that might also be called a Johnnycake. Two bites of pure indulgence guaranteed to put caviar lovers in a fine mood.

Food & wine: where and what to eat--and drink--right now

Martin is known for rich dishes like oxtail stew, johnnycake (fried bread), jacks (fried fish), and pies stuffed with beef or fish.

Caribbean Queens: St. Martin delivers on rum, recreation, and R&R

There is even a recipe for making butter, and Spider johnnycake! One of my favorite recipes is Wild Rice Pudding with Dried Cherries (p.

The Cookbook Shelf

(Not an easily settled question.) "Clearly by the 1760s, with such distinct savoring at diverse points of the New England compass of Indian pudding, chowder, and johnnycake, Puritan temperance in diet, crossed with Yankee insistence on the value of local traditions, was modulating into a set of aesthetic and consumer preferences that amounted to a New England variation on the English theme of economy, neatness, and elegance blending harmoniously together." The answer was uniquely a New England answer.

Northern Hospitality

8 ounces Rhode Island white johnnycake meal' pinch of salt

Seared foie gras with malted johnnycakes

Pity the Southern writer who, for beer and johnnycake, must sell their entire heritage, the bread and the wine of years of sweat and blood; for, mark me, that's the stuff, and not printers' ink, that crosses the lines and makes a reader turn and turn the page; for when it comes to buying and selling, the guns in the city'll be already turned and on the whipping side before you've even rigged up your Ward and Paines.

From the little gap in talk