Skip to main content
Main

Hominy Croquette

A fried croquette made from hominy, butter, milk, sugar, egg, and coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the cooked hominy and melted butter.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk until you achieve a light, soft paste.

  3. Add the sugar and beaten egg, mixing well.

Shape and coat

  1. With floured hands, roll the mixture into oval balls.

  2. Dip each ball in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot lard until golden 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Pearl hominy
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a tender, starchy body.
Milk
Moistens the hominy into a soft paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, beaten, helps cracker crumbs adhere to the outside.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender interior.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. Frying in hot fat quickly sets the crumb coating and browns it, while the interior heats through. If the fat is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes