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Corn Soup

A creamy corn soup made with milk, butter, flour, onion, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Chop the corn finely.

  2. Cook the corn with 1 quart of milk in a double boiler for 15 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  4. Cook the onion slowly for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the flour to the butter and onion, stirring until frothy without burning.

  6. Stir the butter mixture into the corn and milk.

  7. Add salt and pepper.

  8. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Return the strained mixture to the heat.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Mix the beaten yolks with the remaining cold milk.

  5. Pour the yolk mixture into the soup.

  6. Let it cool for one minute while stirring constantly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its creamy, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavor, and with flour forms a thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Egg yolks
Enriches the soup and thickens it gently when stirred in with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot when they are added. Stirring constantly and keeping the heat gentle lets the yolks thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, butter, flour, onion, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, butter, flour, onion, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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