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Egyptian Cream

A creamy corn-based soup made with milk, broth, butter, flour, egg yolk, and cream, served with bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egyptian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine the corn, milk, and broth in a saucepan and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Boil slowly for 40 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt the butter in another pan and stir in the flour for 2 minutes.

  2. Pour the corn mixture into the flour mixture and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the egg yolk and cream, stirring well for 5 minutes without boiling.

  4. Strain the mixture and serve with bread croutons.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the liquid base.
Flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat that is melted with the flour to start the roux.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished soup when stirred in gently.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. If the mixture boils after the egg yolk goes in, the egg can curdle and the texture turns grainy. Stirring steadily and keeping it just below boiling lets the yolk thicken the soup smoothly.

“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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