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Hominy Puffs

Hominy puffs are fried dough cakes made with hominy, flour, baking powder, milk, eggs, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hominy Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Ensure the hominy is thoroughly cooked and cold.

  2. Stir in the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Add flour, milk, and salt alternately with baking powder.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard until boiling, then drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bulk of the puffs and gives them their body and corn flavor.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help it puff.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the puffs rise and turn light.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so the puffs hold their shape while frying.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a drop-able consistency.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the puffs lift. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the puffs turn out dense instead of light.

“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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