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Corn, with Beans

A boiled corn and bean dish seasoned with salt, pepper, milk or cream, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn, with Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the corn as described in recipe No. 569, then cut it from the ears.

  2. Add half or a quarter of the quantity of string beans, cut into diamond shapes, or cooked green flageolet beans.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then moisten with milk or cream.

  4. Warm thoroughly and add a piece of butter 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. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its sweet, tender base.
String beans or green flageolet beans
Add texture and a fresh, vegetal contrast to the sweet corn.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, coating the corn for a creamier texture.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, savory richness when melted over the warm dish.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Lima beansfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pepper, 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.

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