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Stewed Sweet Corn

A simple dish of sweet corn simmered with water, salt, cream or milk, butter, and optional flour for thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Sweet Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Remove husks and silks from the corn.

  2. Stand the ears in a dish and cut off the corn kernels from the top downwards, taking more than half of the kernel in depth.

  3. Scrape gently downwards to extract the remaining milk and meat from each kernel.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the corn in a saucepan and add ½ cup of water for each quart of corn.

  2. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Add salt, cream or milk, and butter, then bring to a boil and serve.

  4. If desired, slightly thicken the milk with flour.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Fresh sweet corn
Provides the main body and sweetness of the dish.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the stewed corn.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk slightly, giving the liquid more body.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be cooked to thicken properly; if it is added to hot liquid without being mixed smooth first, it forms lumps, and the starch only thickens fully once the mixture is heated enough for the starch granules to swell.

“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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