Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Green Corn Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Mix the grated sweet corn with milk, flour, salt, pepper, and egg.
Cook
Drop the mixture by large spoonfuls into a frying pan.
Fry until brown, using butter for frying.
Serve
Serve with meat for dinner.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 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
- Grated sweet corn
- Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the cakes.
- Egg
- Binds the batter so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
- Flour
- Gives the batter body so it holds together rather than running in the pan.
- Milk
- Adds moisture to loosen the batter and helps the cakes brown.
The step that matters
Frying until brown. The mixture is loose, so the cakes need enough heat and time to set firmly before flipping. Cooking over moderate heat lets the centres cook through while the outsides brown evenly.
“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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