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Baked Corn

A baked corn dish with corn, salt, pepper, sugar, egg, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Corn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut each ear of corn down the middle and scrape the cob well.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to the corn.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg into the cream and mix in the flour.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the corn.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve in the same pan.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Corn
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its sweet, fresh flavor.
Egg
Sets during baking to bind the mixture into a spoonable, sliceable custard.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the baked corn tender rather than dry.
Flour
Thickens the egg and cream mixture so it holds together after baking.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the corn. Egg proteins set when heated, so the custard needs to be evenly mixed through the corn before baking. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of loose liquid or overly firm patches in the finished dish.

“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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