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Indian Meal Mush

A thick cornmeal porridge cooked slowly, then sliced and fried, served with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,540 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Indian Meal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Bring water to a boil and add coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Sift in the cornmeal slowly at first, then more rapidly, stirring continuously.

  3. Once thick, add ½ cup of cold water to break up lumps.

  4. Add more cornmeal and a handful of flour, thickening until it drops from the spoon.

  5. Cook for one hour or longer, stirring often.

Set and fry

  1. Transfer to a dish to mold and let it cool.

  2. To serve, cut into slices and fry in a skillet with pork fat or butter.

  3. Cover and cook over low heat, turning occasionally.

  4. Remove the cover for a few minutes to brown the crust.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + syruptop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the porridge as its starch swells and sets when cooled.
All-purpose flour
Adds extra starch to help the porridge thicken further and hold its shape.
Pork fat or butter
Fries the slices, adding richness and helping the outside brown.
Syrup
Adds sweetness to the finished slices.

The step that matters

Adding the cornmeal slowly. Dropping cornmeal in too fast can create lumps as the starch hits hot water unevenly. Sifting gradually and stirring constantly lets each grain hydrate and keeps the porridge smooth.

“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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