Skip to main content
Main

Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from pressed corn, milk, flour, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 soup base

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a double boiler.

  2. Add the corn cobs from which the corn has been removed.

  3. Cover and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the cobs.

  5. Add the corn and cook for an additional 20 minutes.

  6. Press the mixture through a puree sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Rub the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the butter and flour mixture to the soup, stirring continually until it thickens.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Place the beaten yolks in a tureen.

  5. Gradually add the hot soup to the yolks.

  6. Season.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Pressed corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the corn and gives the soup a creamy richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred into the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and works with flour to help thicken the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding body and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot soup to the yolks. Egg yolks set at about 70°C and will scramble if they meet hot liquid all at once. Adding the hot soup slowly, while whisking, warms the yolks gently so the soup stays smooth and thick.

“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.

More corn soup recipes

Green 46Chicken 11Sweet 4Cream 3Creamed 3Creole 3 See all 204 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipesCornmeal PuddingCornmeal Pudding32 recipesHulled CornHulled Corn23 recipes