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Parched Sweet Corn

A lightly toasted sweet corn dish prepared by boiling, browning in butter, and seasoning with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Parched Sweet Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the corn, removing all imperfect kernels and bits of cob.

  2. Place the corn in a sieve and pour boiling water over it.

  3. Drain on a clean towel.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet.

  2. Add the corn.

  3. Stir constantly until each kernel is delicately browned and puffed.

Season and serve

  1. Drain on brown paper.

  2. Sprinkle with salt.

  3. Shake the corn in a coarse sieve to remove excess salt.

  4. Serve as you would salted nuts.

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 + 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

Sweet seed corn
Provides the kernels that puff and brown into the crisp, toasted snack.
Butter
Conducts heat evenly in the skillet and adds richness and browning to the kernels.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until each kernel is delicately browned and puffed. Corn kernels can scorch quickly in hot butter while others stay unpuffed. Constant stirring spreads the heat so the kernels brown evenly and puff before burning.

“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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