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Fried Mush with Cheese

A cornmeal mush cooked over flame, mixed with cheese and paprika, then fried and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,896 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Mush with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Gradually stir cornmeal into boiling salted water.

  2. Cook over direct flame, stirring constantly, for 12 minutes.

  3. Then cook over hot water for 1 hour.

  4. Stir grated cheese and paprika into the mush.

  5. Turn the mush into molds.

  6. Cool until the mush is ready to slice.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut into thin slices.

  2. Sauté the slices until golden brown.

  3. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch gelatinizes with heat.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the sliced mush brown in the pan.
Fat for sautéing
Conducts heat to the slices, producing a golden, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Cooking the mush while stirring. Cornmeal settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, and it must be cooked long enough for the starch to thicken fully so the mush sets firm enough to slice.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Welsh onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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