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Hominy Croquettes

Hominy croquettes are fried balls made from boiled hominy, milk, butter, and flour, coated in beaten egg and grated bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hominy Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the hominy

  1. Pour boiling water over the hominy. Stir and cover.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes until the water is absorbed and the hominy is stiff.

  3. Add milk and salt. Stir thoroughly and cover.

  4. Let it stand for 10 minutes, cooking slowly if necessary.

  5. Beat in the butter.

  6. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands.

  2. Take a piece the size of a small egg and roll it into a ball.

  3. Shape the ball into a croquette on a floured surface.

  4. Roll the croquettes in beaten egg, then in grated bread.

  5. Fry them in deep lard until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hominy
Forms the main body of the croquette, becoming stiff and firm when cooked in water.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the texture of the cooked hominy mixture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the hominy as it cooks.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread coating stick to the croquettes.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cook the hominy until stiff. The hominy must absorb all the water and turn stiff before shaping. If it is still wet, the croquettes will be too soft to hold their shape and may break apart in the hot lard.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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