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Breakfast

Fried Mush for Breakfast

Fried cornmeal mush is a breakfast dish made by slicing and frying cornmeal mush with butter, lard, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mush for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mush

  1. Spread the prepared cornmeal mush in a pan about 1 inch thick and refrigerate overnight.

  2. In the morning, cut the mush into slices about ¼ inch thick.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat equal parts butter and lard in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Dip the slices in beaten egg and coat with flour.

  3. Fry the slices until they are golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cornmeal mush
Chilled overnight so it sets firm enough to slice and hold its shape when fried.
Egg
Binds the flour coating to the mush slices so the crust adheres during frying.
All-purpose flour
Forms a dry coating that browns in the hot fat and gives the slices a crisp surface.
Butter
Adds flavor and helps the coating brown in the skillet.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that browns the coating evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the slices until golden brown on both sides. The mush is starchy and moist, so the fat must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. Too little heat lets the slices absorb grease and turn soggy, while too much browns the outside before the inside heats through.

“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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