CORN
Corn is a popular summer vegetable used in soups, chowders, salads, and a lot of Mexican-style dishes. Its special flavor that reminds somehow of the subtleness of cooked milk and mussels makes it a good combination with these ingredients. The cob of the corn (the inedible part) has also flavor that can be used in soups and stocks. And we can also make corn flour (cornmeal) and popcorn out of dried corn.
From a biological perspective, corn is a very efficient reproducer because each small corn ear is a seed with a lot of nutrition. This nutritious fluid is very tasty and is the main reason we eat corn. It is also very starchy, which makes it suitable for flour production. However, the main use of corn in our dishes requires its freshness and juiciness. Fresh corn is sweet and the skin of the ear is not that tough. It has a yellow or white color (depending on the type of corn), but you can also find blue or green variants of this vegetable.
The sweetness of corn comes from its high content of simple sugars produced by the corn plant, but these sugars with time become more and more linked into the larger starch chains. This is why the liquid of the seed is so "mealy". There also exist some medium-sized sugars in the corn seeds, and they are small enough to be dissolved in water although they are so constituted by binding up a lot of water molecules to their surfaces, which ultimately results in a slightly increased viscosity of the seed fluid.
Why is this sugar talk necessary? Because some forms of corn have been bred to contain as much of the simple and sweet sugars as possible by reducing the level of starch. Some of these super-sweet corns have for this reason a more flowing liquid than the classical corn. Some people find this form of corn very enjoyable, although many other people think such sweet corn does not have the complex feeling about it - it is simply too boring to the palate because sweetness is all you feel. The implication of this chemical composition of sweet corn is also to remember during the cooking of corn. Since it contains less starch, and you happen to want to use the juice of the corn to thicken a soup for example, the thickening effect will not be very prominent.
Also be careful with dosage of corn in your dishes - don't add too much of the sweet thing if your recipe is based on the classical less sweet corn. It will simply ruin the experience of your dish.
Besides the traditional form of corn there also exists a small "baby" corn that is actually an underdeveloped collection of seeds that are not yet able to reproduce. The cob of the corn is edible, unlike the pollinated big corn, and this miniature form of corn is therefore a popular vegetable in many cultures. Baby corn can be used in combinations with foods that the big corn goes well with. So, milk or mussels are good for baby corn, as are squids and also the vegetable dishes that need some sweetness and an exciting new level of corn texture.