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Hominy Croquettes

Hominy croquettes are fried balls made from boiled hominy, butter, milk, sugar, egg, and coated in flour and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hominy Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the cold boiled hominy and melted butter.

  2. Gradually add the milk, mixing until you achieve a soft light paste.

  3. Stir in the white sugar and then add the beaten egg.

Shape and fry

  1. With floured hands, roll the mixture into oval balls.

  2. Dip the balls in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot lard 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Hominy
Provides the starchy bulk that forms the body of the croquette.
Milk
Moistens the hominy into a soft paste that holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating adhere.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the mixture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the croquettes brown in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk. Adding milk slowly lets the starch in the hominy absorb the liquid evenly, producing a soft, workable paste rather than a lumpy or runny one. Too much liquid at once makes the balls hard to shape and likely to break apart in hot fat.

“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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