Skip to main content
Main

Green Corn Boiled

Green corn boiled with sweet butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the husk except the inner layer from the corn.

  2. Strip the inner husk down to remove the silk and any defective grains, then replace and tie it at the top.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil a large pot of water and add the corn.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes for medium ears or 20 minutes for large ears.

  3. Remove the corn from the water, take off the strings, and serve hot.

  4. Serve with sweet butter, pepper, and salt.

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh green corn
Provides the sweet, tender kernels that are the main element of the dish.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the kernels and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling time for the ear size. Boiling too long toughens and dulls the kernels, while too short leaves the corn underdone. Matching the time to medium or large ears keeps the kernels tender and sweet.

“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.

More boiled corn recipes

on the Cob 18 See all 40 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes