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Dessert

Tamale Pie

A sweet pie made with honey, butter, milk, cornmeal, potato flour, and topped with barley bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tamale Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix honey and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in top milk, cornmeal, and potato flour until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Top with slices of barley bread.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Potato + barleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Honey + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Honey
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Top milk
Provides moisture and liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and flour.
Cornmeal
Gives the batter body and a slightly grainy structure as it sets.
Potato flour
Thickens the batter and helps it set with a smooth, tender crumb.
Barley bread
Forms the topping that bakes to a golden brown crust.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter until smooth. Cornmeal and potato flour thicken as they hydrate, so stirring them fully into the liquid prevents lumps and leaves an even, tender set once baked.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, butter, milk, flour, barley, bread):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, butter, milk, flour, barley, bread. 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.

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