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 ↓
Green Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over the corn carefully and brush it with a whisk broom.
Cook and serve
Drop the corn into boiling salted water and cook for 20 to 30 minutes.
Serve hot with butter.
Alternatively, cut the corn from the cob, place it in a vessel over hot water, season, and serve hot.
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 corn
- Provides the sweet kernels that make up the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and moisture to the hot kernels.
The step that matters
Cooking time in boiling water. Boiling for too long toughens and dulls the kernels, while too short a time leaves the starches raw and the texture starchy. Keeping the water at a steady boil and timing the cook within the stated range helps the corn stay tender and sweet.
“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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