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Yankee Corn Drink

A sweet corn and molasses beverage made by steeping corn in water and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Yankee Corn Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 5 gallons of cold water, 1 quart of sound corn, and 2 quarts of molasses in a large keg. Shake the keg well to mix the ingredients.

  2. Seal the keg tightly and let it sit for 2 to 3 days until ready to use.

  3. If the mixture becomes sour, add more molasses and water as needed.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + lemontop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sound corn
Provides the grain that ferments with the sugars to create the drink's flavor.
Molasses
Supplies the sugar that feeds fermentation and gives the drink its sweetness and dark flavor.
Cold water
Forms the liquid base in which the corn and molasses mix and ferment.

The step that matters

Sealing the keg and letting it sit. A tightly sealed keg lets fermentation proceed without air exposure, while the mixture's sourness signals that fermentation has gone too far and needs more molasses and water.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, molasses):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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