Name: Escalloped Corn
Ingredients: 1 can corn; ½ package Uneeda biscuits, broken fine; 1 pint milk; 4 tablespoons butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Escalloped Corn

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix and bake

In a bowl, mix the corn, broken biscuits, milk, salt, and pepper.
Add the butter in small lumps to the mixture.
Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.
Bake for 20 minutes.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Corn + biscuittop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together72 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 sweet flavor of the dish.
Uneeda biscuits: Soak up milk and bind the mixture, giving it a soft, pudding-like structure.
Milk: Supplies moisture that softens the biscuits and forms the custard-like base.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown lightly as it bakes.

“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.