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Stewed Corn and Tomatoes

A simple stew of corn and tomatoes cooked with butter and flour, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Corn and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the corn in a pot for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for 20 minutes after the boil resumes.

  3. Season with salt to taste.

  4. If there is excess liquid, roll the butter in flour and add it to the stew.

  5. Boil for 1 more minute if using flour.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 bulk of the dish and contributes natural sweetness and body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that cook down into the stew's liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and coats the flour so it disperses smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when it is added and boiled.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Flour dropped into hot liquid clumps unless it is first blended with butter. Boiling for a minute after adding it lets the starch swell and thicken the stew and cooks out the raw floury taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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