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Stewed Corn

Stewed corn is corn cooked slowly in hot water with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Husk and clean the corn, then soak it in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. With a sharp knife, split each row of grains from stem to tip.

  3. Shave the grains off the cob rather than cutting them.

Stew and serve

  1. Cover the corn with hot water in a saucepan and stew slowly for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt before serving.

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

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Is the main ingredient, becoming tender and sweet as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished corn.

The step that matters

Shave the grains off the cob rather than cutting them. Shaving keeps the grains whole and lets the milky juice from the kernels thicken the liquid, while cutting tends to release more starch-filled pieces and a coarser texture.

“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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