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
Grate the corn from the cobs.
Pour boiling water over the corn cobs.
Scrape each cob with the back of a silver knife to remove the sweet germ.
Cook the soup
Add the grated corn and salt to the boiling water.
Cook slowly for 15 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
Transfer the mixture to a double boiler.
Add enough milk to thin the mixture to the consistency of cream soup.
Finish and serve
Before serving, stir in the butter and season with salt and pepper.
Optionally, add a tablespoon of whipped cream to each plateful.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet corn
- Provides the main body and natural sweetness of the soup.
- Milk
- Thins the mixture to a creamy soup consistency and adds richness.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavor.
The step that matters
Stirring while cooking the corn. Corn mixtures are rich in starch and sugars that settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring keeps heat even and prevents burning, which would leave a bitter, toasted taste throughout the soup.
“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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