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Stewed Corn

A stew made from canned corn, water, baking soda, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

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

Stewed Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open and drain the can of corn, then place it in a cold place for 3 hours.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and baking soda.

  2. Add the corn and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil once and serve.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Corn
Forms the body of the stew and provides its sweet, tender bulk.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cooking liquid, which helps soften the corn kernels.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stew when coated onto butter and stirred into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter rolled in flour. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid in lumps. Coating the butter evenly and stirring it through the simmering stew lets the starch disperse and thicken the liquid smoothly.

“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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