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Stewed Corn

A dish of corn kernels simmered with sweet milk, butter, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Scald the corn briefly to harden it.

  2. Slice the kernels off the ear, dividing them three or four times.

  3. Scrape the sweet chits from the cob.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the corn, sweet milk, water, butter, and salt.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg and stir it in just before removing from heat.

  4. Add sugar if desired for extra sweetness.

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the milk and corn.
Egg
Beaten in at the end, it thickens the liquid slightly and enriches the texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the corn simmers in, adding moisture and body.

The step that matters

Beat the egg and stir it in just before removing from heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it at the end and removing the pot promptly thickens the liquid gently. Overheating can cause the egg to curdle or turn grainy.

“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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