Skip to main content
Main

Savory Polenta a Lttalienne

A baked polenta dish flavored with butter, cheese, and paprika, served with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

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

Why it works: Cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,041 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Savory Polenta a Lttalienne

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the polenta

  1. Boil 1 cup of polenta and add ½ cup of butter.

  2. After a few minutes, stir in 2 tablespoons of grated cheese.

  3. Cook for an additional 20 minutes.

  4. Let the polenta cool, then cut it out with a round cutter.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the pieces on a buttered baking pan.

  2. Grate Parmesan cheese over the polenta, dot with butter, and sprinkle with paprika.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned.

  4. Serve with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

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. Cheese + parmesan cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parmesan cheese + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Polenta
Forms the body of the dish, setting firm enough to cut into shapes once cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the surface brown in the oven.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the polenta set and brown at the surface.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding a savory, nutty crust.

The step that matters

Let the polenta cool fully before cutting. Polenta is soft when hot and will crumble or tear when cut. Cooling lets its starches set so the rounds hold their shape through baking.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, parmesan cheese):

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, parmesan cheese. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes