Skip to main content
Main

Escalloped Beans and Corn

A baked casserole of string beans, lima beans, sweet corn, milk, butter, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and lima beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Escalloped Beans and Corn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a baking dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the string beans in the dish, dot with butter, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add a layer of sweet corn about ½ inch deep, season, and repeat until the dish is filled.

  3. Pour ½ cup milk over the layers.

  4. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  5. Bake until the crumbs are browned.

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. Beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

  3. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the bulk of the layered filling and give the casserole its main body.
Lima beans
Add starchy body and a mild, buttery texture to the layered filling.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and soft texture between the bean layers.
Milk
Moistens the layers and helps the dish turn creamy as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are browned. Baking long enough lets the milk warm through and the crumbs toast; pulling the dish too early leaves a wet, pale topping over a loose filling.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes