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Dessert

Hominy Cakes

A batter of cooked hominy, wheat flour, salt, milk, and optional eggs is fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cooked hominy, wheat flour, salt, and enough milk to form a batter. Add eggs if desired.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat.

  2. Pour the batter to form cakes.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  4. Serve warm.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cooked hominy
Provides the bulk and corn texture of the cakes.
Wheat flour
Binds the batter and gives the cakes structure as they set.
Eggs
Add binding and richness to the batter when used.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over medium heat lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction while the centre sets. Too high a heat browns the outside before the inside is cooked, and too low a heat leaves the cakes pale and soft.

“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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