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Fried Mush

A fried mush made from Graham meal, salt, lard, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Sift Graham meal slowly into boiling salted water, stirring briskly until thick.

  2. Pour the mixture into bread tins and let it cool.

Cut and fry

  1. Once cold, slice the mush into pieces.

  2. Dip each piece in flour.

  3. Fry the pieces in a mixture of lard and butter in a frying pan, turning to brown both sides.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Graham meal
Forms the thick body of the mush and gives it a coarse, hearty texture.
Lard
Conducts heat in the pan and helps the slices brown crisply on the outside.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps the slices take on golden browning.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown more evenly and form a crisp outer crust.

The step that matters

Let the mush cool fully before slicing. Cooling lets the starch set so the mush firms up. Slicing it warm can tear it, and it will break apart in the hot fat.

“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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