Why it works: Butter and milk 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
Cut the corn from the cob and scrape off the sweet part.
In a pot, combine the corn and hot water; boil for at least 1 hour.
Press the mixture through a colander.
Make the soup
In a saucepan, melt the butter until bubbling.
Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring well.
Add half of the corn pulp and mix until smooth.
Stir in the remaining corn pulp, salt, pepper, boiling milk, and cream.
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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Butter + milktop 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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Provides the main flavour and body, with its starch thickening the pulp as it cooks.
- Butter
- Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour as a base.
- Flour
- Cooked briefly in the butter, it thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture.
- Cream
- Adds fat and a silky, rich mouthfeel to the finished soup.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and mild sweetness, making the soup creamier and smoother.
The step that matters
Cook the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into melted butter and cooking it for a minute cooks off its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stirring well prevents lumps, which would leave the soup grainy.
“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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