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To Make Hot Tamales

A steamed cornmeal tamale filled with seasoned beef, wrapped in corn husks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,028 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Make Hot Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn and husks

  1. Prepare lime water by adding 1 ounce of common lime to 1 quart of water. Stir well, let settle, and drain off the clear water.

  2. Cover shelled corn with water, add lime water, and boil until husks slip off easily. Wash the corn after boiling.

  3. Grind the corn in cold water until perfectly white.

  4. Cut corn husks. Boil husks until clean. Dry husks.

  5. Rub husks with a cloth dipped in hot lard.

Make the filling and dough

  1. In a bowl, mix corn meal, salt, lard, and enough boiling water to form a thick dough.

  2. Boil the beef. Pour hot beef fat over the boiled beef. Cut the beef into small bits. Season the beef bits with salt and chile sauce.

Assemble and steam

  1. Place a layer of dough in each husk. Add a tablespoon of meat to each husk. Roll the husk like a cigarette. Tie each end of the rolled husk.

  2. Steam the tamales for two hours.

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. Beef + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

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

  2. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the dough that wraps the filling and sets into a tender, starchy texture when steamed.
Lard
Adds fat to the dough, keeping it moist and tender rather than dry and crumbly.
Beef
Provides the savory meat filling that gives the tamales their main flavor.
Beef fat
Poured over the cooked meat to add richness and moisture to the filling.
Lime (in the method)
Softens the corn hulls so the kernels can be cleaned and ground into a smoother dough.

The step that matters

Forming the dough. The dough must be thick and well mixed with boiling water so it holds together and spreads evenly in the husk. Too thin a dough can fall apart or turn soggy during steaming.

“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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