Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Roasted Green Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and roast
Remove the husk from the green corn.
Roast the corn on a grill over a bright fire of coals, turning it as one side is done.
If using a wood fire, clean a spot in front of the fire, lay the corn down, and turn it when one side is done.
Serve
Serve the roasted corn with salt and butter.
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.
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Green corn
- Provides the sweet kernels, which caramelize and char slightly over the direct heat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that melts over the hot corn and carries its flavor.
The step that matters
Turning the corn. Turning once one side is done lets the kernels brown evenly as their sugars caramelize. Leaving it too long on one side scorches that side before the rest of the corn cooks through.
“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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