Skip to main content
Main

Green Corn Stewed

A stew of corn kernels simmered with milk, butter, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Green Corn Stewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut through the center of each row of corn grains and remove the outer edge.

  2. Use the back of a knife to push out the yellow eye and creamy center, leaving the hull on the cob.

Stew

  1. In a covered pot, combine the corn with the milk and stew in a kettle filled one-third with boiling water.

  2. Cook for two hours, stirring occasionally and ensuring the water supply is maintained.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add more milk or cream before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + white peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,304 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn kernels
Provide the main body of the stew and its sweet, starchy flavor.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and creaminess as the corn simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the water supply up during the long stew. Stewing for two hours in a kettle of boiling water is gentle, indirect heat. If the water runs low, the milk and corn can scorch or dry out, so the water must be topped up as it evaporates.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes