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Baked Hominy

Baked hominy is a dish of boiled hominy seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and egg, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked Hominy

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

  1. Season the cold boiled hominy with salt, pepper, and melted butter.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

  4. Bake in the oven until well 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 dish, giving a soft, starchy body that holds its shape when baked.
Egg
Binds the hominy together and helps set the mixture as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until well browned. Baking long enough lets the egg set and the surface brown through dry heat, which gives flavour and firmness. Pulling it too early leaves the centre wet and loose.

“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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