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Hominy Fritters

Hominy fritters are fried dough-like balls made from boiled hominy, sweet milk, flour, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cold boiled hominy, sweet milk, flour, salt, and egg.

  2. Beat the mixture vigorously until well combined.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot lard.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the bulk of the fritter, giving body and a soft, starchy texture inside.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the fritters structure so they hold together.
Sweet milk
Moistens the batter and loosens it to a spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot lard. The lard must be hot enough so the batter sets and browns quickly on contact. If it is too cool, the fritters soak up fat, turn greasy, and may fall apart.

“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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