Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Hominy

A dish of cooked hominy mixed with butter, cream or milk, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Hominy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the hominy

  1. Wash the hominy and place it in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Slowly heat and boil the hominy gently for about 4 hours, or until soft.

  3. Drain the hominy and let it sit to evaporate excess water.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Gradually stir in the cream or milk until combined.

  3. If using milk, remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the cream or milk mixture with the hominy and serve immediately.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Provides the starchy, tender body that makes up the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Cream or milk
Supplies moisture and dairy richness that coats the hominy.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring egg yolks in off the heat. Egg yolks begin to set around 160°F and can scramble if the mixture is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding them lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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