Skip to main content
Main

Corn Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, tomatoes, parsley, celery, and grated corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the beef

  1. Place the beef in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Skim off any impurities as the water heats up.

  3. Cover and simmer for 5 hours.

Add the vegetables and corn

  1. After 4 hours, add the tomatoes, parsley, and celery; cook for 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the beef and add the grated corn; cook for an additional 15 minutes after boiling.

Season

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and rich flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, brightening the flavor of the broth.
Sugar corn
Adds natural sweetness that balances the savory beef broth.
Celery leaves
Contribute a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.
Parsley leaves
Add a fresh, green aroma that lifts the finished soup.

The step that matters

Keep the beef at a gentle simmer. A hard boil agitates the meat and fat, making the broth cloudy and the beef stringy and tough. A slow simmer over the long cook lets connective tissue melt into gelatin while the broth stays clear.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, celery, sugar, corn, pepper):

  1. Oreganofits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, celery, sugar, corn, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes