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Fried Corn-meal Mush

Cornmeal cooked with water into a mush, cooled, cut into blocks and fried in butter or fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fried Corn-meal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Mix corn meal with water in a pot.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it forms a mush.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Cut the mush into small blocks.

Fry

  1. Heat butter or fat in a deep pan.

  2. Fry the blocks until golden brown on all sides.

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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the thick body of the mush and sets into firm blocks as it cools.
Water
Hydrates the cornmeal so its starches swell and gelatinize into a smooth mush.
Butter or other fat
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the blocks, adding flavor and crispness.

The step that matters

Cook the mush until thick and stir constantly. Cornmeal can scorch on the bottom of the pot and may form lumps if not stirred. Thorough cooking gelatinizes the starch, which is needed for the mush to hold its shape when cooled and cut.

“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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