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
Open a can of corn one hour before cooking.
Transfer the corn to a pot and pour enough hot water to cover it.
Cook the stew
Cook for 30 minutes.
Add milk, butter cut into flour, salt, and pepper.
Cook for an additional 15 minutes.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 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 main body of the dish and provides its sweet flavor.
- Milk
- Adds liquid and creaminess, giving the stew a softer, richer texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
- Flour
- Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the stew body.
The step that matters
Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in the liquid. If it is not evenly dispersed in the milk and corn, it can clump and leave pockets of raw flour, so it needs to be well mixed in before the final cooking.
“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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