Name: Canned Corn, How to Prepare
Ingredients: 1 can of corn; ½ cup milk or cream; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Canned Corn, How to Prepare

Ingredients

Directions

Open the can of corn and pour it into a saucepan.
Add milk or cream to moisten the corn.
Season with salt and pepper.
Add butter and toss until melted.
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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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).
Pepper + buttertop 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 main bulk and sweet flavor of the dish.
Milk or cream: Adds moisture and richness so the corn stays tender and creamy.
Butter: Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, glossy finish.

“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.