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 ↓
Boiled Green Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook
Remove the husks and silk from the corn.
Cook the corn in boiling water for 10 to 20 minutes.
Serve
Serve the corn whole or cut it from the cob.
Season with butter and coarse sea salt.
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 + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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 component of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour over the hot kernels.
The step that matters
Cook the corn in boiling water for 10 to 20 minutes. Boiling cooks the kernels through and softens their starch and sugars. Overcooking makes them tough and dulls their sweetness, so timing matters more than the exact water.
“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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