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Hominy Croquettes

Hominy croquettes are small fried balls made from cooked hominy, butter, milk or cream, sugar, beaten eggs, and coated in crumbs or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Hominy Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cook the fine-grained hominy until quite tender, then set aside to cool slightly.

  2. Add butter, milk or cream, and sugar to the hominy and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into balls, then dip them in beaten eggs followed by cracker crumbs or flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Drain on brown paper to absorb excess grease and serve immediately while hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Fine-grained hominy
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it its soft, starchy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the mixture and improving flavor.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture so the mixture binds into a pliable dough that shapes easily.
Beaten eggs
Binds the coating so the crumbs or flour stick to the balls and set when fried.
Cracker crumbs or flour
Forms a dry outer layer that browns and crisps during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy before it browns. Hot fat sets the crust quickly, keeping the inside moist and the outside crisp.

“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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