Name: Boiled Green Corn
Ingredients: fresh green corn; coarse sea salt; butter; pepper

Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Green Corn

Ingredients

fresh green corn
coarse sea salt
butter
pepper

Directions

Test the corn by piercing a grain with your fingernail; the milk should jet out.
Strip off the outer leaves and remove all the silk, then replace the inner husks.
Boil salted water and cook the corn for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size and age.
Cut the stalks off close to the cob and serve wrapped in a napkin.
Alternatively, cut the corn from the cob while hot and season with butter, salt, and pepper.

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.

Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).