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Geeen Corn Soup

A soup made from grated corn, milk, butter, flour, and egg yolks, finished with optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Geeen Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Grate the corn and cover the cobs with cold water.

  2. Boil slowly for 30 minutes, then remove the cobs.

  3. Add the grated corn and cook until soft and tender.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk with dissolved baking soda and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Add sugar and seasoning to the milk, then allow it to boil once.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. For extra richness, add whipped cream just before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Flour and butter 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 flavour of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the corn and gives a creamy texture.
Butter and flour
Together thicken the milk into a smooth, body-rich base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add thickness and richness when stirred in off the heat.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy finish when added just before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the soup is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and curdle. Removing the pan from heat first keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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