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Boiled Green Corn

Boiled sweet corn is cooked in salted water and optionally finished with butter, pepper, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select full-grown ears of sweet corn that are not hardened and full of milk.

  2. Strip the husks and remove all silk threads.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the corn in a kettle of boiling water with a little salt, ensuring it is fully covered.

  2. Boil for about 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the water and serve hot, covered with a napkin.

Optional creamed corn

  1. Optionally, cut the corn off the cob, place in a saucepan with butter, pepper, salt, and cream or milk, heat, and serve 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ears of sweet corn
Provides the main body of the dish, with milky kernels that turn sweet and tender when cooked.
Salt
Seasons the cooking water so the corn tastes seasoned throughout.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat to the corn kernels.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess when the corn is heated in a saucepan.

The step that matters

Cook the corn fully submerged. If the ears are not completely covered by boiling water, the exposed parts cook unevenly and can turn tough or pale. Keeping the corn under the water ensures even heating and a tender, uniformly cooked result.

“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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