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
Clean and scrape the corn from the cobs.
Boil the cobs in 1 quart of water for 15-20 minutes.
Remove the cobs and add the corn to the boiling water.
Make the soup
Boil the corn for a short time, then add 2 quarts of rich milk.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and melted butter mixed with 2 tablespoons of flour.
Let the soup boil for 10 minutes.
Finish and serve
Turn the soup into a tureen and stir in the beaten yolks of 3 eggs.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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, with sweetness from the kernels.
- Rich milk
- Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its smooth texture.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with butter and cooked in the liquid.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the soup and add body and richness when stirred in at the end.
The step that matters
Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot when they are added. Removing the pot from direct heat before stirring them in helps keep the soup smooth and creamy.
“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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