Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the corn
Boil the corn in salted water with a little milk for 10 minutes.
Drain the corn and run a knife between the rows to remove the grains.
Fry and serve
Melt the butter in a hot saucepan.
Add the corn to the saucepan and fry for 10 minutes, tossing frequently.
Season with salt and pepper, and serve in a hot covered dish.
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.
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Corn
- Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its natural sweetness when fried.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness and helps the corn brown in the hot pan.
The step that matters
Tossing the corn while it fries. Frequent tossing spreads the kernels across the hot butter so they brown evenly instead of scorching in spots. Sugars in corn darken quickly, so a still pan can burn some grains while others stay pale.
“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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