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Polenta

Polenta is a thickened cornmeal dish cooked in water, seasoned with salt, and topped with Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,944 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Polenta

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the polenta

  1. Bring 1 pint of water to a boil in a stewpan.

  2. Add a little salt.

  3. Stir in enough coarse yellow maize flour to make the mixture very thick.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture bubbles and is well cooked.

Shape and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture onto a napkin and shape it into a ball.

  2. Let it cool for a few minutes, then cut it into slices.

  3. Layer the slices in a dish, sprinkling each layer with Parmesan 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. Flour + parmesan cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,944 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

Coarse yellow maize flour
Forms the thick body of the dish as it absorbs water and gelatinizes while cooking.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavour and richness between the layers.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until the mixture bubbles and is well cooked. Maize flour must be cooked long enough for its starch to fully swell and soften; undercooked polenta tastes raw and grainy. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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