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Recipe for Hot Tamales

A Mexican dish of corn dough wrapped in husks, filled with seasoned meat, steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lime work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 773 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Recipe for Hot Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Prepare lime water by mixing 1 ounce of lime with 1 quart of water. Stir well and let it settle.

  2. Soak the shelled corn in the lime water for a while, then boil it in 1 quart of water until the husks peel off easily.

  3. Wash the boiled corn in cold water until perfectly white.

Assemble the tamales

  1. Clean, dry, and dip the corn husks in hot beef fat or lard.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of corn meal with 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt and 1 tablespoon of lard to form a thick dough.

  3. Spread the dough on the corn husk. Add seasoned meat on top. Roll it up tightly like a cigar. Tie the ends with strips of corn husks.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the tamales for about 1 hour before serving.

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 + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together773 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Corn + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lime + beeftop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, sturdy casing when steamed.
Lard
Adds fat to the dough, keeping it moist and tender and helping it hold together.
Shelled corn
Is soaked and boiled to make the hominy base, which gives the dough its characteristic flavor and texture.
Lime
Softens the corn hulls during soaking so the husks slip off easily and the kernels become tender.
Seasoned meat
Provides the savory filling that flavors the tamale from the inside.

The step that matters

Spreading and rolling the dough. If the dough is spread too thick or rolled loosely, the tamale can split or cook unevenly. A thin, even layer and a tight roll help the steam penetrate and keep the filling in place.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limethe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, beef, meat. 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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