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Cornmeal Mush

A simple cornmeal mush made by boiling water with butter, salt, sugar, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cornmeal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease the bottom of a stew kettle with butter.

  2. Pour in water and bring it to a boil.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and sugar.

Cook the mush

  1. Sift in cornmeal gently, stirring continuously to prevent a raw taste.

  2. Stir well for 5 minutes.

  3. Reduce heat and cook slowly for an additional 10 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch swells and sets in hot water.
Butter
Greases the kettle and adds richness and flavour to the finished mush.

The step that matters

Sifting in the cornmeal while stirring. Adding cornmeal gently and stirring constantly keeps it from clumping into lumps. Cooking it fully in boiling water also helps the starch swell, which removes the raw, floury taste.

“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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