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Semolina or Hominy Porridge

A simple porridge made from semolina or hominy, milk, water, salt, and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Semolina or Hominy Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Sprinkle the semolina into the boiling water and add the salt.

  2. Stir until it boils, then reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the milk and let it sit by the fire for about 10 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve it poured neatly onto a plate, ensuring the edges are clean.

  2. Sprinkle with caster sugar or grated lump sugar before serving.

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. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Semolina + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Semolina
Its starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the porridge into a soft, spoonable texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, softening the flavour of the porridge.

The step that matters

Simmering while stirring. Semolina can settle and stick to the base of the pan. Stirring during the gentle simmer keeps the starch evenly hydrated and prevents scorching, which gives a smooth rather than lumpy or burnt porridge.

“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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