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Fried Green Corn

Fried green corn is sautéed corn kernels with butter, lard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fried Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the corn

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter and lard.

  2. Add the cut corn to the skillet.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir often to prevent burning.

  5. Cover the skillet.

Optional oven finish

  1. If using leftover corn on the cob, you can also brown it in the oven.

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

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

  3. 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

Fresh corn
Provides the main body and sweetness, and browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds rich flavor, and its milk solids brown for a nutty aroma.
Lard
Fat that handles higher heat well, helping the corn brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Stir often to prevent burning. Butter's milk solids and the corn's natural sugars can scorch quickly over medium heat. Frequent stirring spreads the heat and keeps the corn browning evenly rather than burning in spots.

“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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