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Dessert

Fried Corn Meal Mush

A fried cornmeal mush made by boiling cornmeal in salted water, thickening with wheat flour, then frying slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Fried Corn Meal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Bring salted water to a boil.

  2. Sprinkle cornmeal into the boiling water, stirring until very smooth.

  3. Let it boil slowly for 30 minutes, adding more cornmeal if needed for the right consistency.

  4. Add a little wheat flour and mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a wet mold or muffin rings and let it cool.

Slice and fry

  1. Once cooled, remove from the mold and cut into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Roll the slices in flour and fry slowly in hot lard or drippings.

  3. Serve with molasses or maple syrup.

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 + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the thick body of the mush and sets firm as it cools for slicing.
Wheat flour
Adds body and helps the slices hold together during frying.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the slices.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into the boiling water. Cornmeal added all at once can clump into lumps that never fully cook. Stirring while sprinkling it in keeps the mush smooth, and the long slow boil then gelatinizes the starch so the mush sets firmly enough to slice.

“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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