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Dessert

Hominy Griddle-cakes

A griddle cake made with hominy, milk, flour, egg, baking powder, and salt, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hominy Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine hominy, milk, and egg. Mix well.

  2. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir until smooth.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides starch and gluten that give the cakes their body and structure.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and hominy, giving the batter a pourable, moist consistency.
Hominy
Adds corn flavor and a tender, slightly grainy texture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins at the surface. Cooking over medium heat lets the centre set before the outside burns, and flipping only once when the edges look set keeps the cakes intact.

“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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