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Corn Meal Mush

A fried cornmeal mush made by cooking cornmeal with water and salt, then forming into slices and frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Meal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Stir cornmeal mixed with cold water and salt into boiling water.

  2. Cook until the mush is well cooked.

  3. Pour the mush into small cans to cool.

Coat and fry

  1. Once cold, slice the mush into rounds.

  2. Dip each slice in beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 mush that sets firm enough to slice and fry.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the slices so the coating holds during frying.
Bread crumbs
Creates a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mush fully before slicing. Cornmeal mush is soft while warm and crumbles when cut. Cooling it until cold lets the starch set, so the rounds hold their shape through dipping and frying.

“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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