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Dessert

Hominy Fritters

Hominy fritters are fried balls made from boiled hominy, sweet milk, flour, egg white, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the cold boiled hominy, sweet milk, salt, and flour.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it into the mixture last.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cold boiled hominy
Forms the bulk and body of the fritter.
Flour
Helps bind the batter so the fritters hold their shape.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Egg white
Whipped, it traps air that lightens the batter.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat and browns the outside.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding the stiff egg white in last, gently, keeps the air it holds. Stirring it in hard deflates the foam, so the fritters turn out denser and flatter.

“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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