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Stewed Green Corn

A dish of fresh corn stewed in water, milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the corn from the cob.

  2. Stew the corn in boiling water for 15 minutes.

Finish in milk

  1. Drain most of the water and cover the corn with cold milk.

  2. Continue stewing until very tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Before serving, add a large lump of butter cut into bits and rolled in flour.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Corn
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its sweet, tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess as the corn stews in it.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel smooth and silky.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the corn a creamy coating.

The step that matters

Adding the floured butter. Flour rolled onto butter and stirred into hot liquid disperses without lumps and thickens as starch swells. Adding it in bits and boiling briefly lets it cook fully so the sauce is smooth and no raw flour taste remains.

“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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