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Corn

Fresh corn on the cob boiled, then served whole or cut into kernels with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select young, tender corn with full-grown grains.

  2. Strip off the outer leaves and silk, leaving the inner leaves.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the corn in a large pot and cover with plenty of water.

  2. Boil the corn for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the water and remove the leaves.

  4. Serve the corn whole or cut off the kernels and mix with butter, pepper, and salt.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the sweet, starchy kernels that make up the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavour and moistens the kernels.

The step that matters

Boil the corn for 30 minutes. Boiling cooks the starch in the kernels until tender. Timing matters: too short leaves them firm and raw-tasting, while overcooking can make them tough and dull in flavour.

“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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