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Tamale Pie

A baked dish of cornmeal, meat, onions, tomatoes, and optional olives and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tamale Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Add corn meal and 1 teaspoon of salt to boiling water, boil for 5 minutes, then cook over hot water for 45 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Melt fat in a pan, add onion, and cook until browned.

  2. Add chopped meat and stir until it is no longer red.

  3. Mix in 1 teaspoon salt, pepper, and tomatoes; optionally add green or red pepper strips.

  4. Add 18 ripe olives and 30 raisins, if desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a baking dish, layer in corn meal mush, pour in the meat mixture, and cover with more mush.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the mush layers that set into the pie's body and crust-like top and bottom.
Chopped meat
Provides the main savory filling and fat that carries flavour through the pie.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the filling, blending with the meat juices.
Onion
Browning in the fat builds savoury sweetness and aroma as a base for the filling.
Fat
Carries the onion's flavour and helps it brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook the corn meal mush fully. Corn meal must boil and then steam slowly for the full 45 minutes so the starch gelatinises and thickens. Undercooked mush stays grainy and will not hold its layers when the pie is cut.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, meat, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, meat, pepper, tomato. 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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