Name: Escalloped Corn
Ingredients: 2 cans corn; 6 tomatoes, peeled; 1½ cups tomato sauce; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Bread crumbs, for topping

Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Escalloped Corn

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.

Assemble

Grind the corn and place a layer in a granite pan.
Slice the peeled tomatoes and layer them on top of the corn.
Cover with the remaining corn and then pour the tomato sauce over it.

Bake

Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,469 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together547 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, providing starchy body and sweetness as it heats.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity that flavour the corn as the dish bakes.
Tomato sauce: Adds liquid that moistens the corn layers and carries tomato flavour through the dish.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned topping as they bake on the surface.