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Drink

Corn Coffee

A beverage made by steeping roasted corn in boiling water, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the ripe, dry corn.

  2. Roast the corn evenly until deep brown.

  3. Fill a coffee boiler half full with the roasted corn.

  4. Nearly fill the boiler with boiling water and cover it.

  5. Let it steep for two hours.

Serve

  1. Add more water to the corn for a second brewing if desired.

  2. Serve with sugar and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe, dry corn
Provides the base that roasts into the brown, toasty flavour of the drink.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and colour from the roasted corn during steeping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the roasted, slightly bitter notes.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Roast the corn evenly until deep brown. Roasting drives the browning reactions that create the main flavour. Uneven roasting leaves pale kernels that taste grassy and burnt pieces that taste bitter, so the brew is unbalanced.

“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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