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Hominy and Farina

A simple dish of boiled hominy and farina served with sugar, milk, or butter.

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 ↓

Hominy and Farina

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the grains

  1. Mix 1 cup farina with water to a thin consistency, then boil for 1 hour.

  2. Soak 1 cup hominy in cold water overnight.

  3. Boil the soaked hominy with ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and milk, or butter and sugar.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Farina
Its starch swells and thickens into a smooth, porridge-like texture when boiled in water.
Hominy
Soaking and boiling soften the corn kernels, giving the dish its tender, chewy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savory fat flavor when served over the hot porridge.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the mild corn and grain flavors.

The step that matters

Boiling the farina to a thin consistency. Farina starch must be fully hydrated and heated to thicken properly. Stir often, because the thickening mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pot and form lumps.

“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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