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Small Hominy or Grits

A breakfast or vegetable dish made from soaked hominy cooked into a thick mush, served with cream, sugar, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Small Hominy or Grits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the hominy overnight.

Cook

  1. Boil the hominy in a little salted water, stirring frequently until thick like mush.

Serve

  1. Serve hot as a breakfast dish with cream and sugar, or as a vegetable with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. For leftovers, cut into slices and fry in a little butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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
Provides the corn base that softens and thickens into a mush.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the finished grits and to fried leftovers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture when serving as breakfast.

The step that matters

Stirring while the hominy boils. Hominy can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot as it thickens. Frequent stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed and prevents sticking, giving a smooth, uniform mush.

“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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