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Hominy Balls

Hominy Balls are small fried balls made from cooked hominy, egg, butter, and salt, dusted with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the hominy until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Let it cool, then mix in the beaten egg, butter, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Drop the balls into a kettle of hot lard.

Serve

  1. Serve with maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Fine hominy
Forms the bulk of the balls, giving them a starchy, tender body.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the cooked hominy cool before mixing in the egg. Adding beaten egg to hot hominy can scramble it and loosen the mixture, making the balls hard to shape and likely to fall apart in the hot lard. Cooling first keeps the egg smooth and the mixture firm enough to hold together.

“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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