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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled corn, milk, cream, and butter, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Boil corn in hot water for 1 hour.

  2. Press the corn through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter until bubbling.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring well.

  3. Add half of the corn pulp and mix until smooth.

  4. Stir in the remaining corn and water.

  5. Add cayenne pepper, salt, boiling milk, and cream.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, mix in the egg yolks just before serving, but do not allow to boil.

  2. Stir in tomato ketchup for added flavor, if desired.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Forms the body and sweet corn flavor of the soup once pressed into a pulp.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the soup, giving it a richer mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the soup when stirred in gently off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated. If the soup boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy, so they should be stirred in just before serving and kept below boiling.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg, butter, flour, pepper, milk, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, butter, flour, pepper, milk, cream. 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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