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Fried Mush

A dish of boiled dough made from flour and Indian meal, sliced and fried in pork fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,187 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. In a large pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of salt and mix in 1 cup of flour with 1 quart of Indian meal until well combined.

  3. Beat the mixture well to avoid lumps and boil gently for 2 hours.

  4. Pour the mixture into dishes dipped in cold water and let it cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Once cooled, cut into 1-inch thick slices.

  2. Fry the slices in pork fat until browned.

  3. Serve with slices of fried pork.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Indian meal
Forms the bulk of the mush and sets into a firm body as it cooks.
Flour
Adds body and helps the mush hold together when cooled and sliced.
Pork fat
Conducts heat for frying and gives the slices a browned, crisp surface and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well while it boils. Beating during the cook breaks up lumps as the starch hydrates, so the mush becomes smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

“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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