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Roasted Green Corn

Roasted Green Corn is a simple dish of corn roasted on a grill and served with salt, butter, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Roasted Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast the corn

  1. Strip off all the husk from the corn.

  2. Roast the corn on a grill over a bright fire of coals, turning it as one side is done. If using a wood fire, clean a spot in front of the fire, lay the corn down, and turn it when one side is done.

  3. Serve with salt and butter.

Make the succotash

  1. For succotash, put the lima beans in a pot with enough cold water to cover them.

  2. Add the cobs from the corn to the pot and boil for 30 to 45 minutes.

  3. Remove the cobs and add the scraped corn to the pot. Boil for another 15 minutes, then season with salt, pepper, butter, and cream.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + lima beanstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young sweet corn
Provides the main sweet, tender kernels and, through the cobs, flavour for the succotash broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour to the corn and succotash.
Fresh lima beans
Supply starchy body and a creamy, mild texture to the succotash.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the succotash and rounding its flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the corn over the fire. Turning the ears as each side finishes lets the kernels char and cook evenly without scorching in one spot. Sugars in sweet corn brown quickly over direct heat, so a steady turn helps prevent burnt patches before the kernels are tender.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Lima beansthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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