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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from corn, water, milk, onion, butter, flour, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Corn Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the corn base

  1. Add corn to boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

Make the white sauce

  1. Scald the milk with the sliced onion, then remove the onion.

  2. Make a white sauce by combining the milk, butter, flour, and salt.

  3. Add the white sauce to the corn puree and mix well.

  4. Season with paprika to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Corn
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup once pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the white sauce, carrying flavour and smoothness.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a white sauce, giving the soup body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the white sauce, adding richness and softness.

The step that matters

Making the white sauce. Flour must be cooked with the butter before the milk is added, otherwise the sauce can taste raw and form lumps. Whisking steadily as the milk goes in keeps it smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, 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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