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 ↓
Small Hominy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the hominy in two or three waters, skimming off the husk that rises.
Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a small iron pot.
Cook
Add 1 quart of hominy and boil until perfectly soft, stirring every few minutes.
If it looks dry before soft, add a little hot water.
Serve
Serve in a covered dish with butter or milk.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hominy
- Is the main ingredient; boiling softens its kernels into a tender, porridge-like dish.
The step that matters
Boiling until perfectly soft. Hominy kernels are hard and tough until fully cooked; stopping early leaves them chewy. Stirring every few minutes keeps them from sticking to the pot, and adding a little hot water if it dries out keeps the cooking liquid at the level needed for even softening.
“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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