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Boiled Green Corn

Boiled sweet corn, seasoned with salt, butter, pepper, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select full-grown ears of sweet corn and check for milkiness.

  2. Strip the husks and remove all silk threads.

Boil

  1. Boil in a kettle of salted water, ensuring the corn is fully covered.

  2. Cook for about 30 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain the water and serve hot, covered with a napkin.

Optional creamed corn

  1. Optionally, cut the corn off the cob, mix with butter, pepper, salt, and cream or milk, and heat before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Sweet corn
Provides the sweet flavour and tender kernels that are the main substance of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel in the optional creamed version.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness to the optional creamed version, softening its texture.

The step that matters

Cook for about 30 minutes until tender. Corn cooked too briefly stays starchy and chewy, while overcooking toughens the kernels and dulls their sweetness. Checking for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock helps the kernels reach a pleasant bite.

“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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