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Hominy Fritters

A fried batter of boiled hominy, sweet milk, flour, egg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cold boiled hominy, sweet milk, and a little salt.

  2. Stir in sifted flour and one egg.

  3. Beat the egg white separately and fold it into the mixture last.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Hominy
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the fritters their corn texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter and holds the fritters together as they cook.
Egg
Binds the batter, and the beaten white adds air for a lighter interior.
Sweet milk
Moistens the batter and loosens it to a droppable consistency.
Lard
Fries the batter and browns the outside of each fritter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white last. The beaten white holds air bubbles that make the fritters light. Stirring it vigorously or over-mixing deflates those bubbles, leaving denser fritters.

“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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