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Green Corn Soup

A simple soup made from corn kernels, milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Corn Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Green Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn using a sharp knife.

  2. Boil the cobs in enough cold water to cover for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the boiled corn water.

  4. Cook the corn pulp in the corn water for 20 minutes.

  5. Add salt and pepper to the corn pulp.

Make the milk base

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Mix the butter and flour mixture into the hot milk.

Combine and finish

  1. After 10 minutes, add the corn and its liquid to the milk mixture.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Corn
Provides the main sweet flavor and body from kernels and cob-simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour clumps if it is not fully blended with the melted butter before liquid is added. Stirring it smooth lets the starch disperse evenly, so the thickened base stays free of lumps.

“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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