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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with corn, milk, onion, butter, flour, egg yolks, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Corn Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat the corn, milk, and onion in a pot.

  2. Press the mixture through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour.

  3. Stir in 2/3 cup of the hot milk mixture.

  4. Cook until smooth.

  5. Gradually add the rest of the milk.

  6. Beat the egg yolks.

  7. Slowly pour in a little of the thickened milk.

  8. Add the rest of the thickened milk.

  9. Add the salt and pepper.

  10. Cook while stirring constantly until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with croutons or pulled bread.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when it is melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy base as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the soup when stirred in gently.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the soup. If hot soup is poured into the yolks too quickly or the mixture boils afterward, the eggs can scramble and curdle. Adding a little hot liquid to the beaten yolks first, then stirring constantly over gentle heat, keeps the custard-like mixture smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, onion, butter, flour, egg, 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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