Skip to main content
Drink

Corn Soup

A simple soup made from corn pulp, white sauce, onion, and optional milk or stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Score each row of corn kernels with a sharp knife and press out the pulp.

  2. Cook the corn ears in a little cold water, then reduce the water and add it to the pulp.

  3. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Pass the mixture through a sieve into the white sauce.

  2. Add milk or stock, and season with salt and pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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 pulp
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the soup.
White sauce
Adds creamy body and thickness to the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sauce, pepper, milk. 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.

More corn soup recipes

Green 46Chicken 11Sweet 4Cream 3Creamed 3Creole 3 See all 204 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes