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Sugar Corn, Stewed

Stewed sugar corn is a sweet and savory side dish made by boiling corn in milk with sugar, salt, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sugar Corn, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cut the corn off the cob and add it to the boiling milk.

Season and thicken

  1. Stir in the sugar and salt.

  2. Mix the butter with the flour and stir it into the corn.

  3. Let it boil for five minutes after adding the butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young sugar corn
Provides the main body and natural sweetness of the dish.
Rich sweet milk
Forms the liquid base and adds creaminess as it simmers with the corn.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot milk, thickening the mixture into a stewed consistency.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded fat flavour to the stew.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that complements the corn.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes after adding the butter and flour. Flour starch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and boiling cooks out the raw floury taste. Stirring the flour mixture in well helps prevent lumps and keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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