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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from corn, water, milk, and butter, finished with cream and served with crisp wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cream of Corn Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the corn through a sieve into a saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water, salt, celery salt, onion juice, and white pepper to the corn.

Make the thickener

  1. Blend corn starch with butter.

  2. Gradually add cold milk.

  3. Cook until thickened.

  4. Add to the corn mixture.

  5. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the beaten cream.

  2. Serve immediately with crisp wafers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Corn + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor and mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy soup.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cook the starch until thickened. Corn starch must be heated to thicken properly; it swells as it cooks and gelatinizes. Adding cold milk gradually and stirring keeps lumps from forming, and cooking it fully avoids a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, celery, onion, butter, milk, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, celery, onion, butter, milk, cream. 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.

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