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Baked Virginu Samp

A baked dish of cooked samp mixed with a cheese and pimento sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 128 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Virginu Samp

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the oil in a pan, whisk in the barley flour and corn starch until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

  3. Stir in the cheese and chopped pimentos, then season with mustard, salt, and paprika.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the sauce with the cooked samp and mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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. Barley + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together128 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + barleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked samp
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the chewy, starchy base.
Milk
Liquid that, with the flour and starch, forms the thickened sauce that moistens the samp.
Cheese
Adds richness and fat, and melts into the sauce to give savoury flavour.
Barley flour
Thickens the sauce together with the cornstarch as it cooks in the oil.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce quickly, giving it a smooth, set body.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour and starch dispersed, preventing lumps. The starch then gelatinises evenly as the sauce heats, producing a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cheese, barley, flour, corn):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, barley, flour, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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