Name: Canned Corn and Tomatoes
Ingredients: 2 cups tomatoes, peeled and sliced (not too ripe); 1 cup corn

Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Canned Corn and Tomatoes

Ingredients

2 cups tomatoes, peeled and sliced (not too ripe)
1 cup corn

Directions

Combine 1 part corn to 2 parts tomatoes in a porcelain or granite kettle.
Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.
Can immediately in tin or glass jars.

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.

Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Provide the main body and liquid, with acidity and fresh flavor that carry the dish.
Corn: Adds sweetness and a tender, starchy bite that balances the acidic tomatoes.

“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.