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Canned Corn

Canned corn is sweet corn preserved in tin cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Canned Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and can

  1. Cook the sweet corn in boiling water.

  2. While boiling, fill tin cans with the corn.

  3. Once used, turn the corn into a colander and rinse with cold water.

  4. Add baking soda and sugar while cooking.

Season and serve

  1. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

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

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet corn
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its natural sweet corn flavor.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's pH, which softens the corn's skins and tenderizes the kernels.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the corn's flavor and offsets any mild bitterness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Add baking soda and sugar while cooking. Baking soda makes the cooking water alkaline, which softens the corn quickly but can turn it mushy and dull its flavor if too much is used. Sugar softens the sweetness of the corn, so the two need to be balanced.

“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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