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Dried Corn

A dish of soaked dried corn cooked with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and optional dumplings made from egg yolk and milk.

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 ↓

Dried Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Wash the corn and soak it overnight in clean cold water or in hot water for 2-3 hours.

  2. Cook the soaked corn in the soaking water for 5-10 minutes.

Make the dish

  1. Add the butter, flour, salt, and pepper once the water is boiling.

  2. For dumplings, mix the egg yolk, milk, and a pinch of salt, then thicken with flour until stiff.

  3. Drop small dumplings (the size of an acorn) into the corn, cover tightly, and cook for 5-10 minutes without removing the lid.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Dried corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once soaked and cooked, gives it its main texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps bind the dumplings.
Egg yolk
Binds the dumpling mixture and adds richness.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while the dumplings cook. Lifting the lid releases steam and drops the temperature, so the dumplings can cook unevenly or turn heavy. Covering them traps heat so they steam through.

“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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