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Hominy Cakes

Hominy Cakes are griddle cakes made with hominy, flour, buttermilk, baking soda, and butter, served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix cold hominy and white flour until smooth.

  2. Add salt and thin with buttermilk mixed with baking soda.

  3. When the batter is the consistency of griddle cakes, stir in melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a griddle as usual until golden brown.

  2. Serve with maple syrup.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the bulk and body of the batter, with starch that helps the cakes hold together.
White flour
Adds structure, helping the cakes set and hold their shape on the griddle.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and a tangy flavor, and its acid reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the cakes and aids browning.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness, richness and flavor, and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Thin the batter to griddle-cake consistency before adding the butter. A batter that is too thick makes dense cakes, while one that is too thin spreads and cooks unevenly. Adding the butter at this stage keeps the texture even and the cakes lighter.

“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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