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Hulled Corn, or Hominy, Croquettes

A fried croquette made from mashed hominy mixed with butter, milk, egg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

  1. In a bowl, mash the hominy or hulled corn with melted butter.

  2. Stir in enough milk to form a paste.

  3. Beat the egg with sugar and mix it into the corn mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. With floured hands, roll the mixture into balls (croquettes).

  2. Fry the croquettes in butter until golden brown.

Variation

  1. For a variation, 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 croquettes and gives them their main corn flavour and body.
Milk
Moistens the corn so it binds into a pliable paste that can be shaped.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns during frying for a golden crust.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the croquettes. The mixture is soft and sticky, so floured hands are needed to shape it. Frying in hot butter sets the outside and browns it; if the fat is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb grease and can break apart.

“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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