Name: Escalloped Corn
Ingredients: 6 ears of cooked corn or 1 can of corn; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; ½ cup corn liquid; 2 tablespoons flour; 3 tablespoons cream; 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escalloped Corn

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Cut the fresh boiled corn from the cob or use the pulp of one can of corn.
Mix the corn with salt, pepper, flour, and sugar, then add the corn liquid.
Melt the butter and mix it with the bread crumbs.

Assemble and bake

Cover the bottom of a pudding dish with half of the bread crumbs.
Add the corn mixture and cover with the remaining bread crumbs.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes and serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the dish and gives its sweet, tender body.
Flour: Thickens the corn liquid and cream into a soft, sliceable custard-like binder.
Cream: Adds richness and moisture, helping the mixture set softly when baked.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden topping and absorb butter for browning.
Butter: Adds fat for flavor and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.

“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.