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Green Corn, Boiled

Boiled fresh green corn served with butter and optional 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 silk from the corn.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add sugar if the corn is not fresh.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the corn to the boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve the corn with butter and a little salt, if desired.

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

Fresh green corn
Provides the sweet kernels that are the main element of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that older corn has lost as its sugars turn to starch.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that coats the hot kernels and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Add the corn to boiling water and time it. Adding the corn only once the water is at a full boil keeps cooking time consistent. Overcooking toughens the kernels and dulls their natural sweetness, so the 20-minute time matters.

“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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