Name: Lye Hominy
Ingredients: wood ashes; good sound corn; butter; salt; milk

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lye Hominy

Ingredients

Directions

Cover wood ashes with water and let sit until the lye is strong enough to eat a feather.
Drain the lye and pour it over corn that has been soaked in cold water overnight.
Boil the corn until the hulls are slipping off and the eyes are coming out.
Transfer the corn to cold water and wash thoroughly, rubbing off all the hulls.
Place the cleaned corn in a large pot with plenty of water and boil slowly for several hours until soft and tender.
To serve, fry the corn in butter or stew in milk until soft enough to mash, then season with butter and salt.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).