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Parched Corn Gravy

A gravy made by parching corn, grinding it into flour, and cooking it with nut butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Parched Corn Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flour

  1. Parch coarse corn in the oven until thoroughly brown.

  2. Grind the parched corn in a coffee mill to make fine flour.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, mix the corn flour, nut butter, and water until smooth.

  2. Cook over medium heat, adding more water as needed to achieve gravy consistency.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the gravy its body and toasted corn flavor.
Nut butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the gravy's texture and rounding its flavor.
Water
Hydrates the flour so starch can thicken it, and sets the final gravy consistency.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat while adding water. Starch in the flour swells and thickens as it heats with liquid. Heating gently and adding water gradually lets the gravy thicken evenly without lumps or scorching.

“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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