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Corn, Stewed

A simple stew of corn with butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the corn

  1. Empty the corn and its liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Stew gently until the corn is tender.

  3. Drain the corn and keep it warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Gradually add the milk.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish

  1. Add the corn.

  2. Simmer gently for 5 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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
Provides the main body and sweet flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Flour starch must be evenly dispersed in the melted butter before liquid goes in. Adding the milk slowly while stirring keeps the starch from clumping, so the sauce thickens 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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