Name: Baked Coen
Ingredients: 12 ears of corn; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon sugar; 2 tablespoons butter (size of an egg); milk (enough to just barely cover)

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Coen

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

With a sharp knife, split the kernels down the middle and scrape the corn from the cob into a baking dish.

Season and bake

Season with pepper, salt, sugar, and butter.
Add enough milk to just barely cover the corn.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn: Forms the main body of the dish, with its natural sugars contributing sweetness as it cooks.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the corn feel moist and tender.
Milk: Provides liquid that gently cooks the corn and creates a creamy, saucy texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that rounds out the corn's flavour and encourages light browning in the oven.

“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.