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Dessert

Hominy Fritters

Fritters made from boiled hominy, sweet milk, flour, egg, and fried in lard.

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir the cold boiled hominy with sweet milk and salt.

  2. Add sifted flour and mix well.

  3. Beat the egg white separately.

  4. Fold the beaten egg white into the mixture.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot lard and fry 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. 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 and body of the fritters, giving them a tender, starchy crumb.
Sweet milk
Moistens the batter so the flour hydrates and the fritters stay tender.
Flour
Provides structure and binds the hominy and milk together as the batter sets.
Egg
Beaten white traps air, helping the fritters puff and stay light inside.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the beaten white. Stirring vigorously deflates it, which makes the fritters dense rather than light.

“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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