Skip to main content
Main

Corn Salad

A salad of corn, onions, green peppers, salt, mustard, sugar, and vinegar cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corn Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine corn, onions, green peppers, salt, mustard, sugar, and vinegar in a large pot.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the corn is tender.

  3. Seal the mixture in airtight containers while hot.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the bulk and tender-crisp texture of the salad.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the salad and gives it its tangy flavor.
Onions
Adds sharp aroma and savory flavor that mellows during cooking.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that complements the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the corn is tender. Cooking the corn fully softens its starch and lets the vinegar and sugar penetrate the kernels. Undercooked corn stays starchy and raw-tasting, while overcooking turns it mushy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, pepper, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pepper, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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.

More corn salad recipes

Green 4 See all 28 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes