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Stewed Corn

A simple stew of corn kernels cooked with water, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Stewed Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the top of the corn kernels and scrape the rest.

Stew

  1. Place the corn in a stewpan and cover with water and sweet milk.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the butter and flour, stirring well.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Corn
Forms the body of the dish, with its sweetness and starch giving the stew its character.
Sweet milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the stew a smoother body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour, stirring well. Flour clumps if dropped in unstirred and can stay as lumps. Stirring it thoroughly into the hot liquid disperses the starch so it thickens evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, butter, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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