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Stewed Corn

A dish of canned corn simmered in water, milk, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Place the canned corn in a pot.

  2. Set the pot in a larger pot of hot water.

  3. If the corn is dry, add a little cold water.

Make the stew

  1. When the corn is tender, pour in enough milk to cover it and bring to a boil.

  2. Roll the butter in flour.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the corn along with salt to taste.

  4. Keep the pot covered while cooking to preserve color and steam the corn.

  5. Stir gently and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

  6. Transfer the corn to a deep dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Canned corn
Forms the body of the dish and supplies its sweetness and tender texture.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, forming the stewing sauce around the corn.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Coated onto the butter, it thickens the milk sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture. Flour only thickens smoothly when it is dispersed in fat first and then heated in liquid; added raw or in clumps, it leaves lumps. Stirring gently while the sauce heats helps the starch hydrate evenly.

“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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