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 the corn stock
Scrape the corn from the cobs.
Boil the cobs in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes.
Remove the cobs.
Make the soup
Add the corn and boil for 15 minutes.
Stir in 2 quarts of rich milk, salt, pepper, and butter.
Thicken with 2 tablespoons of flour.
Boil for 10 minutes.
Pour into a tureen with 3 well-beaten egg yolks.
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 body of flavour and sweetness in the soup.
- Rich milk
- Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smoother consistency.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the soup and add richness and body when stirred in.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so they can curdle or scramble if the soup is boiling. Pour them in off the heat or after the soup has cooled slightly, so they set smoothly and enrich the texture.
“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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