Name: Canned Corn
Ingredients: 1 ounce tartaric acid; ½ cup water; 2 cups sweet corn; sugar to taste; pepper to taste; salt to taste

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 ↓

Canned Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the tartaric acid in the water.
Add the sweet corn and cook until heated through.
Season with sugar, 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.

Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,168 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Tartaric acid: Adds sourness and acidity that helps the corn taste bright and preserves its flavor in the can.
Sweet corn: Provides the main body, sweetness and texture of the dish.

“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.