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Hominy Croquettes

A fried croquette made from hominy, milk, butter, and flour, coated in beaten egg and grated bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 hominy base

  1. Pour boiling water over the hominy, stir, cover, and boil for 20 minutes until the water is absorbed and the hominy is stiff.

  2. Add milk and salt, stir thoroughly, cover, and let it stand for 10 minutes, cooking slowly if necessary.

  3. Beat in the butter and pour the mixture into a shallow pan.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, flour your hands and take a piece the size of a small egg, rolling it into a ball.

  2. Shape the ball into a croquette on a floured surface.

  3. Roll the croquettes in beaten egg and then in grated bread.

  4. Fry them in deep 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. Milk + buttertop 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
Forms the bulk of the croquette and, once cooked until stiff, holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mixture a softer, more tender texture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the grated bread adheres to the croquettes.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the hominy mixture as it stands.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Shaping warm hominy is difficult because the starch is still soft and sticky. Cooling lets it firm up so the croquettes hold their form when rolled and fried.

“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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