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Dessert

Hominy Cakes

A griddle cake made with hominy, flour, buttermilk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix cold hominy and white flour until smooth.

  2. Add salt and buttermilk mixed with baking soda until the batter is the consistency of griddle cakes.

  3. Stir in melted butter.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle as usual.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Hominy
Provides bulk and a coarse, tender texture to the cakes.
White flour
Gives the batter structure so the cakes hold together when cooked.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, and reacts with baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas and lighten the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor, tenderness, and browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Mixing the baking soda into the buttermilk and batter. Baking soda reacts with the acid in buttermilk as soon as they combine, releasing gas. Mixing it in promptly and cooking the batter without long delay keeps the rise strong, and the batter should be thinned to griddle-cake consistency before cooking.

“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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