Name: Indian Meal Waffles
Ingredients: 2 cups hominy; 2 cups Indian meal; 1 piece of butter; 3 eggs; a little salt; milk (enough to make a thin batter)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Indian Meal Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Boil the hominy until very soft.
In a bowl, combine the boiled hominy, Indian meal, butter, eggs, salt, and enough milk to create a thin batter.
Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Bake

Preheat the waffle iron and pour in the batter.
Bake 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hominy: Softened boiled corn adds moisture and a tender, slightly starchy body to the batter.
Indian meal: Cornmeal provides the main structure and the characteristic corn flavor of the waffles.
Eggs: Eggs bind the batter and help set the waffles as they cook.
Butter: Butter adds richness and fat, improving flavor and helping the waffles brown.
Milk: Milk thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Cornmeal batters can stick or burn before they set, so the cook should watch for golden color and let the waffle release cleanly. Browning comes from sugars and proteins reacting with heat, so too little time leaves the waffle pale and soft.

“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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Indian Meal Waffles