Name: Baked Corn
Ingredients: 1 quart corn, kernels sliced off and scraped out; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ cup butter; 1 cup rich milk or cream

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Corn

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

1 quart corn, kernels sliced off and scraped out
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
½ cup butter
1 cup rich milk or cream

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Slice off the tops of the corn kernels and scrape the remainder out.

Bake

In a bowl, combine the corn, salt, butter, and milk or cream.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Corn: Provides the bulk and natural sweetness that the dish is built around.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a soft, silky texture.
Milk or cream: Adds moisture and richness, helping the corn become tender and custard-like as it bakes.

“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.