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Fried Hominy

Fried hominy is a dish of sliced boiled hominy coated in flour and fried in salt‑pork drippings, served with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Hominy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the cold boiled hominy.

  2. Dredge the slices with flour.

  3. Fry the slices in a little hot salt-pork drippings until brown.

  4. Serve with butter and pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cold boiled hominy
Forms the main body of the dish, its starchy slices crisping on the outside while staying tender inside.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown more evenly and form a crisp surface when fried.
Salt-pork drippings
Hot fat conducts heat into the slices, driving browning and adding savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, milky flavor to the finished slices.

The step that matters

Fry the slices in hot drippings until brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the flour-coated surface quickly. If it is too cool, the slices absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp.

“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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