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Hominy and Farina

A dish of boiled hominy served with sugar, milk or butter, and separately boiled farina served as breakfast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hominy and Farina

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the hominy

  1. Soak hominy in cold water overnight.

  2. Boil soaked hominy in water with salt for 1 hour.

Cook the farina

  1. Mix farina with water to a thin consistency and boil for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve hominy with sugar and milk or butter and sugar.

  2. Serve farina as a breakfast 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Soaking and boiling soften the corn kernels into a tender, chewy base.
Farina
Its starch swells in boiling water, thickening the mixture into a smooth, porridge-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the hominy, softening its flavour and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling the farina with water. Farina thickens as its starch swells in hot water, and it can scorch on the bottom or form lumps if not stirred while it cooks. Keeping the mixture at a thin consistency at the start lets it cook evenly over the full hour.

“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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