Name: Indian Corn
Ingredients: 4 ears of corn; ½ cup butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Indian Corn

Ingredients

4 ears of corn
½ cup butter
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Directions

Cook the corn

Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil.
Add the corn and boil for about 45 minutes until tender.
Drain the corn and slice the kernels off the cob with a sharp knife.

Finish and serve

Return the corn to the saucepan, add the butter, and season with salt and pepper.
Toss over heat until hot, then serve in a warm 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.

Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn: Provides the main starchy, sweet body of the dish once cooked until tender.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the kernels and carrying flavour.

“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.