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 the corn cobs with a knife to remove the sweet germ.
Cook the soup
Add the grated corn and salt to the liquid.
Cook slowly for 15 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
Transfer the mixture to a double boiler.
Add enough milk to thin the soup to the consistency of cream soup.
Stir in the butter.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve
Top each serving with a tablespoon of whipped cream if desired.
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 flavour and body of the soup, with starch that thickens it as it cooks.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and thins the soup to a smooth, cream-soup texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Stirring while the soup cooks. Corn and milk solids settle and scorch easily on the bottom of the pan, which gives a burnt flavour. Constant stirring over slow heat keeps the starch and sugars dispersed and the soup smooth.
“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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