Skip to main content
Main

Hot Tamale

A tamale made with browned chicken, tomato sauce, cornmeal mush, and wrapped in corn husks, steamed until hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hot Tamale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the chicken pieces in lard until browned and cooked through.

  2. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes, red peppers, onions, garlic, salt, and sugar. Cook until thickened like chili sauce, avoiding scorching.

  3. Mix the chicken with the tomato mixture. Prepare cornmeal mush on the stove, ensuring it is well salted.

Assemble and steam

  1. Spread a soaked corn husk on a table and layer with cornmeal mush, followed by the chicken mixture, then another layer of mush.

  2. Cover with another corn husk, tie the ends securely, and place in a large steamer over heat to keep hot.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Chickens
Provide the main meat filling, cooked through by frying before assembly.
Cornmeal mush
Forms the soft outer layers that hold the filling together inside the husk.
Tomatoes
Supply the moist, tangy base of the sauce that is reduced until thick.
Red peppers
Add body and flavor to the sauce as it cooks down into a thick relish.
Corn husks
Wrap the filling so it steams inside a sealed package.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomato sauce. The sauce must thicken without scorching, because sugars and proteins in the tomato and pepper mixture can burn on the bottom of the pan and taste bitter. Stirring and gentle heat keep it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, pepper, onion, garlic, sugar, sauce):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, pepper, onion, garlic, sugar, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes