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Old Fashioned Hulled Corn

A method of boiling corn with wood ashes to remove hulls, then simmering until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,532 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Hulled Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Shell the corn.

  2. Place the corn in an iron kettle.

  3. Cover the corn with cold water.

  4. Add the bag of wood ashes.

  5. Boil until the corn looks yellow and tastes strong of the alkali.

  6. Remove the bag.

Make the hominy

  1. Boil the corn in the lye for over an hour.

  2. Pour off the lye.

  3. Add fresh water.

  4. Simmer until the corn swells.

  5. If hulls do not come off, rub them off with a towel.

  6. Add more water.

  7. Simmer for 3-4 hours, stirring often to prevent burning.

  8. When the corn is soft and white, add salt to taste.

  9. Let the water simmer away.

Serve

  1. Serve warm or cold with cream or milk.

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 + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe, dry corn
Forms the base of the dish; the alkali softens the kernels and loosens their hulls.
Wood ashes
Supplies the alkali (lye) that softens the corn and loosens the hulls during boiling.

The step that matters

Stop the boil once the corn is soft and white. Simmering too long or without enough water can scorch the corn, and stirring keeps the bottom from burning. Rinsing away residual lye matters for flavor and safety, so the corn should be washed well before it is eaten.

“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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