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Fried Corn

Fried corn is a dish of corn kernels sautéed with flour, water, salt, pepper, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fried Corn

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the corn from the cob, ensuring each grain is cut halfway.

  2. Scrape the remaining corn off the cob with a knife.

  3. In a bowl, mix the corn with flour, water, salt, and pepper.

Fry

  1. Heat the butter or lard in a frying pan until piping hot.

  2. Add the corn mixture to the pan and let it cook without stirring until browned.

  3. Turn the corn over and let it brown again, repeating until nearly all is perfectly brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main bulk and sweet flavor of the dish.
Flour
Helps bind the corn mixture and encourages an even golden crust while frying.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat into the corn and adds fat for browning and richness.

The step that matters

Let the corn cook without stirring until browned. Leaving the corn undisturbed lets a crust form on the pan side. Moving it too early prevents browning and leaves the corn steamed and pale.

“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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