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Hominy, Boiled

A dish of soaked and boiled hominy served hot with butter or fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hominy, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Soak the hominy in 4 quarts of cold water overnight or for 6–8 hours before boiling.

Boil

  1. Add the soaked hominy and 8 quarts of cold water to an iron pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam that rises to the top after it starts boiling.

  4. Cover and let the hominy boil for 3.5 hours, ensuring it does not stop boiling.

  5. If it boils over, add boiling water as needed.

  6. Remove the hominy from the pot.

  7. Beat the hominy in a wooden tray with a strong wooden beater.

Serve or fry

  1. Serve hot with butter or let it cool for frying later.

  2. Heat an iron vessel.

  3. Add butter and salt to the vessel.

  4. Fry the hominy in hot lard until light brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 that softens during long boiling and forms the dish's body.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that helps the hominy brown lightly.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for serving or with the frying pan.

The step that matters

Keep the hominy boiling continuously for 3.5 hours. If the water stops boiling, the hominy cooks unevenly and can stay firm in places. Adding boiling water to replace what boiled over keeps the temperature steady so the kernels soften through.

“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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