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Dessert

Corn Cob Syrup

A sweet syrup made from boiled corn cobs and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Cob Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cobs

  1. Cut the corn cobs into small pieces.

  2. Boil the pieces in 1 gallon of water until reduced to ½ gallon.

  3. Strain the liquid well.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 2 pounds of brown sugar and 4 pounds of white sugar to the liquid.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain into bottles while warm.

Bottle and seal

  1. Once cool, cork the bottles and seal with paraffin.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red corn cobs
Simmered in water to release their flavor and natural sweetness into the liquid that becomes the syrup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor to the syrup.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and body, helping the syrup thicken as it boils down.

The step that matters

Boiling the cobs until reduced to ½ gallon. Reducing the liquid concentrates the flavor and dissolved sugars. Stopping too early leaves the syrup thin and weakly flavored, while over-reducing can make it too thick.

“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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