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Boiled Hominy

A dish of boiled hominy served with butter, pepper, cream, and optionally sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Hominy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the hominy overnight.

Cook

  1. Boil the soaked hominy in slightly salted water for three hours.

Serve

  1. For a breakfast dish, serve with sugar and cream.

  2. For a vegetable dish, stir in butter, pepper, and cream while hot, then serve in a warm dish.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 main body of the dish, and its starch thickens as the kernels cook and soften.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel when stirred into the hot hominy.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the hot hominy a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Soak the hominy overnight. Soaking hydrates the dried kernels before boiling, so they soften evenly and cook through in the long simmer instead of staying hard at the centre.

“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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