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Stewed Corn and Tomatoes

A simple stew of corn and tomatoes cooked with butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Corn and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the vegetables

  1. Simmer the corn in water for five minutes.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes.

  3. Cook for twenty minutes after the boil resumes.

Finish

  1. Season with salt to taste.

  2. Roll the butter in flour before adding it.

  3. Boil for one more minute.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and adds natural sweetness as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Adds moisture and acidity, building the stewed liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid, giving the stew a fuller body.

The step that matters

Roll the butter in flour before adding it. Coating the butter in flour helps the flour disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps when it hits the hot liquid.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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