Skip to main content
Main

Dried Corn

A dish of dumplings made from dried corn, butter, flour, and egg yolk, simmered in a seasoned broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Dried Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Wash the corn in cold water.

  2. Soak the corn overnight or place it over hot water for 2-3 hours.

Cook the corn

  1. Cook the softened corn in the soaking water for 5-10 minutes.

  2. Add the butter, flour, salt, and pepper as soon as the water boils.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, milk, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour until stiff.

  3. Drop small dumplings (no larger than an acorn) into the corn mixture. Cover tightly.

  4. Cook for 5-10 minutes without removing the lid.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into a tender, starchy base as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the corn.
Flour
Thickens the corn mixture and gives the dumpling dough enough body to hold its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the dumpling mixture and helps it set into a firm, cohesive texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dumpling dough.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while the dumplings cook. Trapped steam cooks the tops of the dumplings evenly. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the dumplings can cook unevenly and turn heavy.

“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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes