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Dessert

Maize Pudding

A baked pudding made from cold hominy, apples, lemon juice, sugar, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Maize Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the cold hominy, chopped apples, lemon juice, sugar, and currants. Mix thoroughly to ensure there are no lumps of cold hominy.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour or until the top is light brown.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 body of the pudding, absorbing liquid and giving it a soft, starchy texture.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that bake down into the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly to remove lumps of cold hominy. Cold hominy clumps when it meets other ingredients and can stay dense and uneven after baking. Thorough mixing spreads the starch evenly so the pudding bakes to a uniform, smooth texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, lemon, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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