Skip to main content
Main

Polenta, a L’ltalienne

A baked polenta made with milk, maize meal, Parmesan cheese, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Polenta, a L’ltalienne

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the polenta

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Add salt to the boiling milk.

  3. Gradually stir in maize meal until the mixture is thick.

  4. Continue stirring and boiling until smooth.

  5. Add grated Parmesan cheese and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for nearly 30 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid that the maize meal swells in to form a thick, creamy base.
Golden maize meal
Its starch thickens the boiling milk, giving polenta its body and structure.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that enriches the polenta's texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the maize meal gradually. Adding maize meal all at once to hot liquid can clump into lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring lets each grain hydrate evenly, producing a smooth, thick result.

“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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes