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 ↓
To Boil Hominy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the hominy in two or three waters, rubbing the grains with your hands to whiten them.
Soak the hominy overnight in water.
Cook and store
Boil the soaked hominy in the same water for 4 to 6 hours, adding boiling water to keep it an inch above the hominy.
Check if the hominy is done by pressing a grain; it should be soft.
Drain the hominy through a colander and store it in a cool place.
Reheat and serve
To reheat, place the hominy in a saucepan with a little milk and simmer for about 20 minutes.
Mix butter and flour together according to the amount of milk, then stir into the hominy until it thickens.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender during long boiling.
- Milk
- Provides moisture and liquid for reheating the hominy.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the reheated hominy.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk and butter mixture so the hominy becomes creamy.
The step that matters
Keeping the hominy covered with water while boiling. Hominy absorbs water as it cooks over several hours, so if the grains are exposed they can dry out and cook unevenly. Topping up with boiling water keeps the heat steady and the grains evenly softened.
“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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