Skip to main content
Main

Chicken and Corn Soup

A soup made from chicken broth, corn, milk, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken and Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Skim the fat from the top of the pot liquor and save it.

  2. Heat the pot liquor to a boil.

  3. Add the corn cobs and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the soup and return it to the heat.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the grated corn and cook for 40 minutes.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour mixture along with the parsley.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pot-liquor from cooked chicken
Provides the savoury chicken broth that forms the base of the soup.
Corn
Adds sweetness and body as its starch thickens the soup while it cooks.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavour of the broth.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the soup and butter adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if dropped in raw, so it should be rolled into the butter and stirred in evenly, then simmered so the starch thickens fully and loses its raw taste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, corn, milk, butter, flour, 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes