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 ↓
Lye Hominy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a lye solution strong enough to float a feather.
Wash the corn and drop it into the hot lye.
Once the hulls start to come off and the eyes fall out, remove the corn and place it in cold water.
Wash the corn well and place it in a pot, leaving room for it to swell.
Boil the corn until thoroughly cooked, then add coarse sea salt.
Serve fried in butter or pork gravy for a delicious breakfast dish.
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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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
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