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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with corn, onion, milk, butter, flour, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar.

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

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onion

  1. Boil the chopped onion in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain and mash the onion through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Return the onion to the pot and add the corn, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil and strain again through a fine strainer.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, keeping the soup hot but do not cook further.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main sweet flavor and body of the soup.
Rich sweet milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and creaminess.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it body.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks without cooking further. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Keep the soup hot but below a boil so it stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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