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Corn Porridge

A creamy corn porridge made with milk, butter, egg yolks, and optional sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Corn Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Combine the corn and milk in a pot and stir well.

  2. Boil until the corn is perfectly soft.

  3. Add bits of fresh butter that have been dredged with flour.

  4. Boil for 5 more minutes.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  6. Remove from heat after 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, stirring in additional fresh butter.

  2. Add sugar and nutmeg if desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Young corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the porridge as it softens in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks the corn into a soft, creamy porridge.
Flour
Coats the butter pieces so they disperse and help thicken the porridge rather than clumping.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the porridge, adding richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and curdle if the porridge is too hot or boiling hard. Stir them in gently and take the pot off the heat promptly so the mixture stays smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, butter, flour, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, butter, flour, egg, sugar. 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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