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Baked Hominy

A baked dish of boiled hominy mixed with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Baked Hominy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rub the melted butter into the hominy until there are no lumps.

  2. Add the salt and mix thoroughly into the hominy.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk and pour it over the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy and fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until lightly browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Hominy
Forms the bulk and body of the dish, soaking up the milk and eggs as it sets.
Eggs
Set the mixture and, with the whipped whites, give it a light, airy structure.
Milk
Supplies liquid that makes a soft, moist custard once baked.
Butter
Coats the hominy and adds richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only while they are frothy and stable. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, so the baked dish rises and stays light rather than dense.

“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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