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Corn a LA Mexican

A Mexican-style corn dish with tomatoes, green pepper, butter, and garlic or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,098 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut tomatoes into quarters and remove all seeds.

  2. Before chopping the green pepper, pour boiling water over it, let it stand for one minute, then peel off the skin.

Cook

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add green pepper and garlic; cook for three minutes without browning.

  2. Add tomatoes and salt; cook for five minutes.

  3. Add freshly boiled corn cut from the cob and a tablespoon of butter or cream; serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,098 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,044 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Corn + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,324 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

Tomatoes
Break down into a juicy base that forms the sauce with the pepper and corn.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the pepper and garlic and adds richness to the finished dish.
Green pepper
Softens in butter to add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor.
Corn
Provides the sweet, starchy body of the dish.

The step that matters

Cook the green pepper without browning. Browning turns the sugars bitter and changes the clean, fresh flavor, so the pepper and garlic should soften gently over moderate heat for the full three minutes.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, corn, pepper):

  1. Basilbetter flavor fit
  2. Corianderbetter flavor fit
  3. Celerybetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, corn, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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