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Dried Corn Bulled with Saleratus

A boiled corn dish seasoned with saleratus, pepper, butter, and optional milk or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Dried Corn Bulled with Saleratus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cover the dried corn with cold water and add the saleratus.

  2. Boil the corn until the hulls crack and begin to curl up.

  3. Wash the corn three or four times in cold water, rubbing it between your hands to remove the hulls.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the corn in salted boiling water or a mixture of milk and water until tender.

  2. Season with pepper and butter, and serve as a vegetable.

  3. Alternatively, serve with milk or cream and sugar for breakfast or supper.

  4. Cold boiled corn can be fried in butter or heated in milk.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried corn
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender after long soaking and boiling.
Saleratus
Alkaline agent that softens the tough hulls so they crack and loosen during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess when used in the cooking liquid or served with the corn.

The step that matters

Boil until the hulls crack and begin to curl. Stopping too early leaves the hulls tough and hard to remove, while boiling too long can break down the kernels. The alkaline saleratus loosens the hulls, so the cook needs to watch for the visual cue.

“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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