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
Split and cut the corn off the cobs.
Boil the corn in the water until tender and the water is nearly gone.
Make the soup
Add the milk and bring to a boil.
Pour some of the hot soup onto the beaten eggs, then return it to the kettle.
Mix the flour into the butter, then add pepper and salt to taste.
Stir the butter mixture into the soup and let it boil once.
Serve
Serve in a tureen.
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.
-
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
-
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Forms the main body and sweet corn flavour of the soup.
- New milk
- Makes up the liquid base and gives the soup its creamy richness.
- Eggs
- Thicken the soup gently when heated and add richness.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour for thickening.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
The step that matters
Adding the eggs. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Pouring some hot soup onto the beaten eggs first gradually raises their temperature, so they blend smoothly when returned to the kettle.
“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.
More corn soup recipes
You might also like
Corn Fritters203 recipes
Cornmeal Gruel41 recipes
Cornmeal Pudding32 recipes
Hulled Corn23 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.