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Samp, or Hulled Corn

Samp is a boiled corn dish prepared by soaking corn in water with hardwood ashes, then boiling until hulls fall off.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Samp, or Hulled Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and hull

  1. Place the corn in a pot and cover it with water.

  2. Add the hardwood ashes and soak for a while.

  3. Boil the mixture until the hulls come off easily.

Wash and cook

  1. Wash the corn in cold water to remove the taste of potash.

  2. Boil the corn again until the kernels are soft.

Serve

  1. Serve with milk or cream.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the starchy kernels that soften and become the dish's body.
Hardwood ashes
Supply alkali that loosens the hulls and helps soften the kernels during soaking and boiling.

The step that matters

Wash the corn in cold water. Ash alkali left on the kernels leaves a bitter, soapy taste. Thorough rinsing removes the residual potash before the final boil, so the samp tastes clean.

“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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