Why it works: Pork and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Hoe-cake
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
In a bowl, mix the cornmeal and salt.
Add enough boiling water to just moisten the meal and let it stand for 10 minutes.
Add more boiling water until the batter can drop from a spoon.
Cook and serve
Grease a hot griddle with a piece of fat salt pork.
Pour the batter onto the griddle to form cakes and cook until done.
Top each cake with a piece of butter and serve.
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.
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the cakes, giving them their structure and grainy texture.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal so it forms a batter that holds together and cooks through.
The step that matters
Add more boiling water until the batter can drop from a spoon. Cornmeal absorbs water as it stands, so the batter thickens. Adding water gradually until it drops from a spoon gives a batter that spreads into cakes rather than stiff dough or a runny mix.
“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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