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Mexican Tamales

A Mexican dish of seasoned chicken wrapped in corn husks and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mexican Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cook the chickens until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.

  3. Add the cooking liquid and season well.

  4. Add red pepper to taste and thicken with cornmeal.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll the mixture into sausage-sized rolls.

  2. Wrap in the inner husks of green corn and tie with string at each end.

  3. Boil for 3 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. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat for the filling and most of its savory flavor.
Cornmeal
Thickens the cooking liquid so the filling holds its shape when rolled.
Red pepper
Adds heat and color to the filling.
Inner husks of green corn
Wrap each roll, holding its shape and letting it steam while boiling.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornmeal before rolling. Cornmeal absorbs the hot cooking liquid and swells as it thickens. If the filling stays too loose, the rolls will not hold their shape in the husks and may break apart during boiling.

“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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