Why it works: Corn and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,069 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Pried Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut and scrape the corn from the ears.
Fry the salt pork in a skillet until browned.
Cook the corn
Add the corn and water to the skillet, unless the corn is very young and juicy.
Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until thick and beginning to brown.
Allow a light brown crust to form at the bottom, then turn into a dish.
Add salt to taste.
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 + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,069 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
- Corn
- Provides the bulk of the dish, and its starch thickens as it cooks down.
- Salt pork
- Renders fat into the skillet that browns the corn and adds savory flavor.
- Water
- Creates steam that softens the kernels and loosens the mixture early in cooking.
The step that matters
Cook slowly, stirring occasionally. Slow cooking with regular stirring lets the corn's starch thicken gradually and its sugars brown without scorching on the bottom of the skillet.
“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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