Name: Plain Hominy Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup hominy; 1 pint hot milk; 1 generous lump of butter; coarse sea salt to taste; sugar and cream for serving

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 ↓

Plain Hominy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the hominy in tepid water for 3 hours.
Drain the hominy and boil it in plenty of salted boiling water for 30 minutes or until tender.

Finish and serve

Turn off the water and add the hot milk and a little salt, then cook for 15 minutes, then stir in the butter.
Transfer to a deep dish and serve with sugar and cream.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 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: Forms the body of the pudding, softening during soaking and boiling to a tender texture.
Hot milk: Adds moisture and richness, thickening gently around the softened hominy as it cooks.
Butter: Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and a mellow flavour when stirred in at the end.

“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.