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Indian-meal Mush

A thick mush made from yellow Indian meal cooked in boiling water, then sliced, dredged, and fried, served with butter and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Indian-meal Mush

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Pour boiling water over the yellow Indian meal and add the salt.

  2. Stir constantly to prevent lumps.

  3. Tie the mixture in a wet cloth.

  4. Place a tea-stand in the pot to prevent sticking.

  5. Boil the wrapped mixture in salted boiling water for 2 to 3 hours.

  6. Turn the cooked mixture out onto a dish.

  7. Let the mush cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Slice the cooled mush.

  2. Dredge the slices with flour or bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the dredged slices in hot drippings or butter.

  4. Serve hot with butter and syrup.

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. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + syruptop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Yellow indian meal
Cornmeal forms the body of the mush as it thickens with boiling water.
Boiling water
Hydrates the cornmeal so its starch swells and gelatinizes into a thick mass.
Flour or bread crumbs
Forms a crisp golden crust on the slices when they are fried.
Salt-pork drippings or butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Stir constantly at the start. Cornmeal added to hot water clumps quickly if not stirred, and lumps stay raw inside. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the mush cooks smooth.

“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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