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Dessert

Corn Crunch

A sweet treat made from corn syrup, margarine, nuts, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and raisin work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn Crunch

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Cook corn syrup until it forms a hard ball in water.

  2. Remove from heat; add margarine and stir until melted.

  3. Stir in nuts and raisins.

Set and cut

  1. Pour mixture into a greased pan.

  2. When partly cooled, mark into squares or break into irregular pieces once cool.

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 + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Syrup + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Meat + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn syrup
Forms the sugary base that hardens into a brittle, crunchy candy when cooled.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty bite that contrasts with the brittle base.
Raisins
Add chewy pieces and natural sweetness throughout the candy.
Margarine
Adds fat that softens the syrup slightly and gives a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the corn syrup to a hard ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-ball stage so that, once cooled, it sets firm and brittle rather than sticky. Undercooking leaves a chewy, tacky candy that will not hold its shape.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, syrup, meat):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, syrup, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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