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Green Corn

A stew of sweet corn kernels and green beans cooked in boiling water with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn cobs.

  2. String the green beans and cut them into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Wash the beans and add them to the corn in a stew-pan with boiling water.

  2. Cover and boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Add the butter, salt, and pepper; stir well.

  4. Cover for 10 minutes and serve.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  2. Corn + green beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

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

  3. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet corn
Forms the bulk of the stew and sweetens it as it cooks.
Green beans
Add body and texture, becoming tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, silkier mouthfeel to the stew.

The step that matters

Boiling for 45 minutes. The beans need a long, covered simmer to soften fully, while the corn stays tender. Stopping early leaves the beans fibrous and the stew watery and unevenly cooked.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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