Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓
Corn Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grate the corn and place it in a mixing bowl.
Make the pudding
Add salt, cream, beaten eggs, butter, and enough flour to bind the mixture. Mix well until combined.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Bake
Bake for 2 hours until set and golden.
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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Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together465 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Provides the bulk and sweet flavor of the pudding.
- Eggs
- Set the custard-like mixture into a firm, sliceable texture as they cook.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown in the oven.
- Wheat flour
- Binds the mixture so it holds together rather than running apart.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a softer, smoother texture.
The step that matters
Baking until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it loose and watery, while baking until just set keeps it tender rather than curdled or dry.
“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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