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Dessert

Recipe for Hot Tamales

A tamale made with finely ground veal and pork, seasoned with garlic, oregano, cumin, and salt, mixed with a cornmeal and rice mush.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Oregano and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Recipe for Hot Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Grind the veal and pork very fine and cook them.

  2. When nearly done, add the ground spices, including the fried and ground garlic.

  3. Mix the meat mixture thoroughly and chill it in pans.

Make the mush

  1. Cook the cornmeal, rice, and ¼ lb salt in 3 gallons of water to make the mush.

Form and cook the tamales

  1. Apply the hot mush over the chilled meat mixture.

  2. Use equal parts of meat and mush to form the tamales.

  3. Stuff the mixture into corn husks, tie the ends, and steam or cook as desired.

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. Oregano + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + oreganotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + oreganotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + cumintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meat body and texture of the filling.
Pork
Adds fat and richness to the meat filling.
Cornmeal
Thickens the water into a mush that binds the tamale.
Rice
Adds body and softness to the mush.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the meat mixture moist and tender.
Peppers
Provides the chili heat and flavor of the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the mush. Cornmeal can lump and scorch if it is not stirred while it cooks in the water. Its starch must thicken fully to form a smooth mush that holds the tamale together.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, oregano, cumin, rice):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, oregano, cumin, rice. 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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