Name: Green Corn Soup
Ingredients: 12 ears of green corn; 1 gallon cold water; 2 quarts fresh milk; butter to taste; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

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 ↓

Green Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn stock

Shave the corn from the cobs.
Boil the cobs in 1 gallon of cold water for 30 minutes, then remove and skim the water.

Make the soup

Chop or bruise the corn and boil it in the same water for 30 minutes.
Add 2 quarts of fresh milk and season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.
Let it boil and serve.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Green corn: Provides the main sweet flavour and body of the soup, especially once bruised and simmered.
Fresh milk: Adds richness, creaminess and a mild sweetness to the broth.
Butter: Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel and flavour.

“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.