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Canned Corn

A preserved sweet corn product made by boiling corn with tartaric acid, soda, sugar, butter, pepper, and salt.

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

Canned Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Dissolve tartaric acid in water.

  2. Add one tablespoon of the mixture to two quarts of sweet corn.

Cook and season

  1. Cook the corn until boiling hot.

  2. Add a little soda and sugar while cooking.

  3. Season with butter, pepper, and salt.

Fill and finish

  1. Fill tin cans with the hot corn.

  2. Turn corn into a colander.

  3. Rinse with cold water.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet corn
Forms the main body of the dish and carries most of its flavor and texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the corn.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the corn's flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add one tablespoon of the tartaric acid mixture. Tartaric acid is strong, so the measured amount controls the corn's tartness. Too much makes the corn sour, while too little leaves it flat and less stable.

“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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