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Hominy Fritters

Hominy fritters are fried cakes made from boiled hominy, eggs, flour, salt, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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. Combine hot boiled hominy, eggs, salt, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Thin the mixture with a little cold milk.

  3. Once cool, add baking powder and mix thoroughly.

Fry

  1. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat.

  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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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
Provides the main body and soft, starchy texture of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps the fritters hold their shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet batter, helping the fritters rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Adding the baking powder after the mixture cools. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, and heat speeds this up. Adding it once the batter has cooled and mixing it in thoroughly keeps the gas working for lift in the hot fat instead of escaping early, so the fritters fry up lighter.

“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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