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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from 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 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 ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Chop the corn very fine and add it to the boiling water.

  2. Cook slowly for 20 minutes.

Make the milk and roux

  1. In a double boiler, scald the onion with the milk.

  2. Remove the onion and add the milk to the corn mixture along with the sugar.

  3. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir to form a smooth paste.

  4. Add enough of the corn mixture to the flour and butter to achieve a pourable consistency.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the two mixtures and add the seasonings.

  2. Beat thoroughly with a wire whisk.

  3. Keep hot over hot water until served.

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 + milktop 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 flavour of the soup.
Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavour in the flour-based paste.
Flour
Thickens the milk and corn mixture into a creamy soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the soup its smooth richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the corn flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the corn mixture to the flour and butter. Flour lumps form if it is added dry or too thick. Adding enough liquid to make a smooth, pourable paste first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly when the two mixtures are combined.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, butter, milk, 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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