Name: Corn Pop Overs
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet milk; 1 coffee cup corn meal; 2 tablespoons butter (about the size of an egg); ¼ teaspoon salt; 3 eggs

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Pop Overs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the sweet milk in a saucepan.
Stir in the corn meal, butter, and salt into the hot milk.
Beat the eggs well and stir them in last.
Do not add any soda.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together247 recipes

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