Name: Hulled Corn, or Hominy, Croquettes
Ingredients: 1 cup cold, soft-boiled hominy or hulled corn; 1 teaspoon melted butter or drippings; 1 cup milk; 1 egg; 1 teaspoon sugar; Flour for dusting; Butter or lard for frying; Optional: finely-chopped ham, veal, or chicken

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hulled Corn, or Hominy, Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

In a bowl, mash the hominy or hulled corn with melted butter.
Stir in enough milk to form a paste.
Beat the egg with sugar and mix it into the corn mixture.

Shape and fry

With floured hands, roll the mixture into balls (croquettes).
Fry the croquettes in butter or the leftover meat gravy until golden brown.
For a crispier version, dip in beaten egg, coat with cracker crumbs, and fry in hot lard.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Hominy or hulled corn: Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a soft, starchy body.
Milk: Moistens the corn into a paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Egg: Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold together while frying.
Butter: Adds richness and flavour, and helps the outside brown when fried.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The mixture is soft and starchy, so it can break apart or absorb too much fat if the pan is not hot enough or the croquettes are moved too early. Frying until golden brown forms a crisp crust that holds the shape.

“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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Hulled Corn, or Hominy, Croquettes