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Hominy Porridge

A potato and flour bread fermented with yeast and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Porridge

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes in their skins until cooked.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid.

  4. Place the potatoes in a clean wooden pail.

  5. Add flour to the potatoes.

  6. Mash the potatoes with a rolling pin.

  7. Stir in cold water. Mix well.

Make the sponge

  1. Place flour in a large pan.

  2. Make a hole in the center of the flour.

  3. Strain the potato liquid into the hole.

  4. Rinse the hole with more water.

  5. Add yeast.

  6. Add enough flour to make a thin batter.

  7. Cover the mixture.

  8. Let it ferment for 2 hours.

Make the dough and bake

  1. Add salt.

  2. Add enough water to form a dough.

  3. Knead the dough well.

  4. Cover the dough with a clean cloth.

  5. Let it prove for 1½ hours.

  6. Knead the dough again.

  7. Divide the dough into loaves.

  8. Let the loaves prove.

  9. Bake the loaves in a moderate oven.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, and their cooking liquid adds moisture to the dough.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough and feeds the fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.

The step that matters

Let the batter ferment for 2 hours. Yeast needs time to multiply and produce gas; under-fermenting leaves the dough dense, while the sponge must stay covered so it does not dry out or form a skin.

“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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