Name: Dried Corn Succotash
Ingredients: 1 teacup dried green corn; 1 tablespoon sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter; a little milk or cream; pepper to taste

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 Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the dried green corn in water until tender, about 1 hour.
Add sugar, salt, butter, milk or cream, and pepper to the corn, then stir well to combine.

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.

Butter + milktop 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).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried green corn: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender after simmering.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Milk or cream: Adds moisture and creaminess to the corn.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the savory salt and pepper.

“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.