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Green Corn Soup

A soup made with corn kernels, milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

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

Green Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn ears with a sharp knife.

  2. Boil the cobs in enough cold water to cover for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the boiled corn cobs.

  4. Cook the corn pulp in the corn water for 20 minutes.

  5. Add the salt and pepper to the corn pulp.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Mix the butter and flour mixture into the hot milk.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the corn and its liquid to the milk mixture.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 flavor and body of the soup, with its starch thickening the liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds sweetness and softness.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour clumps easily when added to liquid. Stirring it into the melted butter first and then mixing it into hot milk helps it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

“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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