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Stewed Corn

A dish of corn cooked with milk, butter, and cream, seasoned with 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 Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the corn with a sharp knife and press out the grains with the back of the blade.

Cook

  1. In a double boiler, combine the corn and milk, and cook until tender.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. If too dry, add a little cream or sufficient water to prevent burning.

  4. After 20 minutes, drain off the water, then add 1 cup of cream and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Forms the body of the dish, with starch that thickens as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the corn and makes it creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and extra moisture to keep the corn from drying out.

The step that matters

Watching the moisture during the double boiler cooking. The corn can dry out or scorch if liquid runs low, so adding cream or water when it looks dry protects the texture. Draining the water before adding cream keeps the final dish from becoming thin.

“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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