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Green Corn on Cob

A simple boiled green corn on the cob, optionally sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Corn on Cob

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip off the husks and remove all the silk from the corn.

Boil

  1. Place the corn in boiling water.

  2. If the corn is not entirely fresh, add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the water.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn on the cob
The main ingredient; its kernels cook through in boiling water and keep their own sweetness.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to corn that has lost some of its natural sugar.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes. Boiling too long toughens the kernels and makes them starchy and dull in flavour. Timing the boil from when the water returns to a boil keeps the kernels tender and sweet.

“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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