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Dessert

Hominy Muffins

A baked muffin made with boiled hominy, cottolene, butter, eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Hominy Muffins

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hominy Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat together the hominy, cottolene, and melted butter until smooth.

  2. Stir in the salt and sugar, then add the beaten egg yolks and mix until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the loppered milk and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking soda and fold it into the mixture.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-greased small tins and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Egg yolks and whites
Enrich the batter and add lift and structure as the whites are folded in.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure that holds the muffin crumb together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic loppered milk to release gas, helping the muffins rise.
Loppered milk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Hominy
Adds body and a tender, slightly grainy texture to the muffins.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air that gives lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the muffins rise and stay light.

“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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