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Canned Corn Stew

A stew of canned corn, fat salt pork, water, milk, butter, flour, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Canned Corn Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Empty the can of corn a few hours before using to remove the cloying taste.

  2. In a pot, combine the chopped fat salt pork and cold water, and stew covered for 1 hour.

Finish the stew

  1. Add pepper and the corn, then cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the butter in hot milk and mix in the flour, then pour into the pot.

  3. Add the sugar, simmer for 5 minutes, and serve in a deep dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Corn
Forms the main body and sweet flavour of the stew.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat and savoury flavour into the cooking water.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, rich body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch heats and swells.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury pork.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the hot milk and butter. Flour starch clumps when it meets liquid unevenly. Dissolving it fully in the hot milk and butter before adding it to the pot lets the starch disperse and thicken the stew smoothly rather than in lumps.

“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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