Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Green Corn, Boiled
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Strip off the husks and remove all silk from the corn.
Boil and serve
Put the corn in boiling water; add sugar if the corn is not fresh.
Boil for 20 minutes, then serve.
Alternative serving
Alternatively, cut the corn from the cob, mix with butter and a little salt, and serve in a covered vegetable dish.
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.
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,168 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh green corn
- Provides the sweet kernels that are the main substance of the dish.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to corn that is not entirely fresh, as its natural sugars have declined.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the kernels a smooth coating.
The step that matters
Adding sugar to older corn. Corn starts converting its sugar to starch soon after picking, so older ears taste bland. Adding sugar to the water restores sweetness, and fresh corn needs none.
“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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