Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Green Corn Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the grated green corn, flour, milk, melted butter, egg, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered pan.
Bake or fry for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Grated green corn
- Provides the main bulk and sweet corn flavour and moisture to the batter.
- All-purpose flour
- Gives the cakes structure as its starch and proteins set during cooking.
- Egg
- Binds the batter together and helps the cakes set firm when heated.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown during cooking.
The step that matters
Bake or fry until golden brown. Cooking long enough sets the egg and flour so the cakes hold together, while browning adds flavour. Stopping too early leaves them soft and pale in the centre.
“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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