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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled corn, milk, butter, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the corn broth

  1. Cook the corn cobs in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the cobs.

  3. Add the grated corn to the water.

  4. Boil for 1 hour or until very soft.

  5. Pulp the mixture through a colander back into the water.

  6. Season and simmer.

Thicken and enrich

  1. Melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Add a little of the soup to thin the mixture.

  4. Pour it into the soup pot.

  5. Stir until smooth.

  6. Heat the milk in another saucepan.

  7. Pour it over the beaten egg yolks.

  8. Cook for 1 minute.

  9. Pour the milk mixture into the tureen.

  10. Season with pepper and salt.

  11. Stir in the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Grated corn
Provides the main sweet corn flavour and body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter into a smooth base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the soup's flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the soup, giving a silky texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot or are added to boiling liquid without tempering. Thinning the hot milk and adding it gradually, then keeping the heat gentle, keeps the soup smooth.

“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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