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Soup

Corn Soup

A savory soup made with corn, milk, butter, onion, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

Finish the soup

  1. If using raw corn, add it to boiling water and cook for 5 to 7 minutes.

  2. Combine the corn with the milk and heat until just below boiling.

  3. Thicken the soup with the onion, flour, and butter mixture, then add salt, pepper, and paprika.

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. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavor, and helps the flour cook into a smooth base.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its smooth, rich texture.
Corn
Provides the main flavor and natural sweetness, plus body from its starch.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Thickening with the flour mixture. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid. Cooking the flour in butter first and mixing it in gradually helps prevent lumps and a raw floury taste, giving a smooth, even soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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