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Green Corn, Boiled

Boiled green corn served with butter and optional sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Green Corn, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip off the husks and remove all the silk from the corn.

Boil and serve

  1. Put the corn in boiling water; add sugar if the corn is not fresh.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes, then serve.

Alternative serving

  1. Alternatively, cut the corn from the cob, mix with butter and a little salt, and serve in a covered vegetable dish.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main body and natural sweetness of the dish.
Sugar
Restores sweetness in corn that is no longer fresh, as its sugars have partly turned to starch.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the kernels for a softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes. Timing matters because the kernels keep cooking in their own heat after the water is drained, and prolonged boiling can make them tough and starchy, while too short a time leaves them raw and firm.

“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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