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Tamale De Casuela

A cornmeal tamale with pork, olives, and chili, baked in a layered casserole.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Tamale De Casuela

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove fat and bones from pork, cut into 2‑inch pieces, and boil until tender.

  2. Heat a frying pan and add 2 tablespoons of lard or butter.

  3. Season the meat with salt and garlic, then transfer to the frying pan and fry until browned, stirring to prevent sticking.

  4. Add 1 cup of broth and 2 tablespoons of chili powder to the browned meat, stirring well.

  5. Dredge the meat with flour and let simmer, adding more broth if it becomes too dry.

Make the porridge

  1. In a large pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Gradually stir in 2 cups of cornmeal, cooking until thick like mush, adding broth if too thick.

  3. Stir in 2 beaten eggs and 2 tablespoons of lard.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the bottom of a baking dish with a layer of porridge, then add a layer of meat and olives, and cover with more porridge.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Olive + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,716 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + garlictop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

Flour and butter 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

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the thick mush that sets into the body of the tamale.
Eggs
Bind the porridge and help it set firm when baked.
Pork
Provides the main meat filling, browned for savory flavor.
Olives
Add salty, tangy bites that contrast with the rich meat and porridge.
Lard
Adds fat for richness and helps the porridge stay tender.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into boiling water. Cornmeal added too fast clumps and cooks unevenly, so it must be stirred in gradually and kept moving to form a smooth, thick mush.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, pork, flour, butter, meat):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, pork, flour, butter, meat. 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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