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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with canned corn, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Corn Soup

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Chop the corn from the can finely and add it to the boiling water.

  2. Cook slowly for twenty minutes.

  3. Scald the milk with the onion. Remove the onion from the milk.

  4. Add the scalded milk to the corn mixture.

Thicken and season

  1. Combine the butter and flour in a pan and cook together.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture to the soup.

  3. Stir in the sugar, salt, and white pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with freshly popped corn that is slightly salted.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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 flavour of the soup.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux, they thicken the soup and add richness.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be cooked with the butter before it goes into the soup; cooking it briefly removes its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, butter, cream, flour, onion. 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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