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Creole Corn Soup

A hearty soup of corn, salt pork, onion, and spices simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Creole Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brown the salt pork well in the hot lard or oil, then remove from the pot and set aside.

  2. Brown the finely chopped onion in the same fat.

  3. Add the flour to the browned onion to form a roux.

  4. Prepare the corn by splitting the grains lengthwise and cutting them from the cob.

Make the soup

  1. Add the corn to the roux and fry until tender, stirring constantly.

  2. Add parsley, garlic, red pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Thin the mixture with about 1 quart of boiling water, adding more if necessary.

  4. Replace the salt pork, cover, and simmer on low heat until the meat is thoroughly cooked.

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.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat and flavour into the pot, and its meat is cooked through in the soup.
Corn
Provides the main body and sweetness, and thickens the soup as it softens.
Flour
Forms a roux with the fat that thickens the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Browning the flour into the onion roux. The flour must be cooked in the fat until it loses its raw taste and thickens the liquid smoothly. Stirring constantly keeps it from scorching, which would give a bitter flavour and dark specks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, corn, flour, parsley, garlic, pepper):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, corn, flour, parsley, garlic, pepper. 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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