Skip to main content
Main

Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from sweet corn, milk, butter, flour, eggs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Cut the grains from the corn and scrape the milk from the cobs.

Make the soup

  1. Add the corn and milk to 1 quart of water and boil for 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Stir in 2 quarts of new milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix ¼ pound of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour and add to the soup.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

Finish with egg yolks

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks of 2 eggs.

  2. Pour the boiling soup over the egg yolks while stirring continuously.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Sweet corn
Provides the main flavour and sweetness, and its milky juice thickens the soup slightly.
New milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Adding the soup to the egg yolks. If the yolks are poured into hot soup they can scramble. Pouring the boiling soup slowly over the yolks while stirring continuously gently warms them so they thicken the soup smoothly instead of curdling.

“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

Green 46Chicken 11Sweet 4Cream 3Creamed 3Creole 3 See all 204 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipesCornmeal PuddingCornmeal Pudding32 recipesHulled CornHulled Corn23 recipes