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Fine Hominy Cakes

A baked or fried cake made from hominy, eggs, butter, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fine Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hominy

  1. If using cold hominy, break it into grains with a fork.

  2. Heat the broken hominy in a steaming pot without adding water.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of butter.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Stir the yolks into the hominy.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add ¼ teaspoon of salt, adjusting if the hominy was not well salted.

Bake or fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto well-buttered tin plates.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  3. For fried hominy, mix in 1 teaspoon of flour with the butter before shaping into cakes or balls.

  4. Fry in hot lard until golden brown on both sides, turning carefully.

  5. Serve with butter and syrup.

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

Hominy
Forms the body of the cakes, providing starchy structure and a tender, grainy texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the cakes structure and a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown in the oven or pan.
Flour
Adds body to the fried version so the shaped cakes hold together better in hot fat.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten separately and folded in gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving the cakes dense rather than light.

“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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