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Roasted Green Corn

Roasted green corn is served hot with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Roasted Green Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip off the husks and remove all the silk from the corn.

Roast

  1. Hold the ear with a fork or roasting iron over a clear fire and roast carefully, turning to cook all sides evenly.

  2. Once roasted, place the corn in a napkin on a plate in the oven to keep warm.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, allowing each person to season with butter, pepper, and salt to taste.

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

Ears of green corn
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking to tender kernels with a sweet, smoky char from the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting over the hot corn to carry flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the ears while roasting. Corn cooks unevenly if one side sits against the heat too long, leaving some kernels raw and others burnt. Turning steadily lets all sides brown and cook through evenly.

“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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