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Hominy Cakes

A batter of hominy, milk or water, flour, eggs, and salt, fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine warm boiled hominy and milk or water in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to make a thin batter.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them into the batter with a little salt.

Cook

  1. Fry the mixture in a skillet as you would fry other cakes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hominy
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their corn flavor and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during frying to hold the cakes together.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the cakes structure as they cook.
Milk or water
Adds moisture so the hominy blends into a thin, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Frying the thin batter. Because the batter is thin, it can spread and break apart if handled too early. Letting the cakes set and brown on one side before turning helps them hold together and develop a golden crust from the starches and proteins.

“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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