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Musn, or Polenta

Polenta made by boiling cornmeal in salted water, then cooled, sliced, and fried with butter and optional fried onions, sage, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Musn, or Polenta

Ingredients

Directions

Make the polenta

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Gradually add 1 pound of Indian corn meal while stirring constantly.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes, stirring continuously to prevent burning.

  4. Pour the cooked mush into a deep dish and let it cool.

  5. Once cooled, turn it out onto a plate to serve solid.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with milk or cut into slices and fry in butter.

  2. Optionally, add fried onions, sage, pepper, and salt to the fried slices.

  3. For a Welsh rabbit, place a slice in a cheese toaster and top with cheese.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Corn + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian corn meal
Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch swells and sets when cooled.
Boiling water
Hydrates the corn meal so it cooks into a soft, spoonable mush.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and browns the cooled slices when fried.

The step that matters

Boil for 45 minutes, stirring continuously. Corn meal settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot as it thickens. Constant stirring keeps it smooth and prevents burning, and the long cook fully gelatinizes the starch so the mush sets firm when cooled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, sage, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, sage, pepper. 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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