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Another Way to Fry Hasty-pudding

A fried cornmeal pudding made with butter, eggs, and flour, cooked in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Fry Hasty-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Prepare fresh cornmeal mush according to previous directions.

  2. Stir in additional cornmeal as it boils and thickens until stiff.

Enrich the pudding

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the hot mush and mix well.

  2. Let the pudding cool slightly, then beat the eggs until light.

  3. Stir the beaten eggs into the pudding when it's cool enough to avoid curdling.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll spoonfuls of the mixture in flour to form small balls.

  2. Drop the balls into hot lard and fry 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cornmeal mush
Forms the thick base that holds the balls together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the mush.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and add structure and richness.
Flour
Dry coating on the balls that helps them brown and keeps the surface from sticking.
Lard
Hot frying fat that browns the outside of the balls.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs in after the pudding cools slightly. If the mush is too hot, the egg proteins can scramble and curdle, leaving streaks instead of a smooth, bound mixture. Letting it cool a little first lets the eggs blend in evenly.

“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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