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Green Corn Soup

A soup made from green corn, water, milk, salt, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Corn Soup

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Green Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Run a sharp knife down the rows of corn and split each grain.

  2. Press out the pulp with the back of a knife, leaving the hulls on the cob.

  3. Break the cobs if long and put them in cold water to cover.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the water, ensuring you have at least 1 pint.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the corn water to a boil.

  2. Add the corn pulp.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a coarse colander.

  5. Add salt and hot milk.

  6. If too thin, thicken with corn-starch or flour.

  7. Boil again.

  8. Serve.

  9. Add sugar for improved flavor if desired.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Green corn
Provides the main flavor and the starchy pulp that gives the soup its body.
Hot milk
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the soup.
Corn-starch or flour
Thickens the soup if it is too thin, through starch swelling when heated.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a coarse colander. Pressing the cooked pulp through the colander separates the smooth body of the soup from the tough fibrous hulls. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup gritty and stringy.

“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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