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Soup

Butter Bean and Sweetcorn Soup

A soup of butter beans, sweetcorn, celery, milk and stock, finished with cheddar and thyme.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sweetcorn work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 102 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter, add onion, celery and garlic and fry gently for 5 minutes until softened.

  2. Add remaining ingredients except the cheese and bring to a boil, simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in 50 g (2 oz) cheese and heat gently.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with remaining cheese and thyme.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + sweetcorntop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Celery + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Celery + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter beans
Form the body of the soup, adding starch and a creamy, filling texture.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the soup.
Cheddar cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, melting into the soup for richness.
Sweetcorn
Adds natural sweetness and a pleasant bite to the soup.
Onion
Softens during frying to build a sweet, savoury base.

The step that matters

Stir in the cheese and heat gently. Cheese is added after the soup has simmered. Boiling it can make it turn stringy or grainy, so keep the heat low so it melts smoothly into the milk-based soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, celery, garlic, milk, sweetcorn, beans):

  1. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, celery, garlic, milk, sweetcorn, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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