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Savory Polenta a Lttalienne

A baked polenta dish with butter, cheese, paprika, and served with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,041 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Savory Polenta a Lttalienne

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the polenta

  1. Boil 1 cup of polenta meal in water.

  2. Add ½ cup of butter and 2 tablespoons of grated cheese.

  3. Cook for 20 more minutes.

  4. Let it cool, then cut into rounds with a cutter.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange on a buttered baking pan.

  2. Grate Parmesan cheese over the rounds.

  3. Dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned.

  5. Serve with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

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. Cheese + parmesan cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parmesan cheese + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Polenta meal
Forms the base body of the dish, setting firm once cooked and cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the rounds brown in the oven.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the surface brown when baked.
Parmesan cheese
Forms a savory, browned crust on top of the rounds.

The step that matters

Let it cool before cutting. Polenta must cool and firm up fully before cutting, otherwise the rounds stay soft and break apart on the pan.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, parmesan cheese):

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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