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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with corn, milk, flour, butter, pepper, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 base

  1. Cook the corn and milk together for 10 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the flour and pepper to the butter.

  4. Gradually stir in the hot milk and corn as it thickens.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup to remove the corn.

  2. Press as much corn as possible through the strainer.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the heat.

  4. Add the well-beaten egg.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil again.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its body and creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and hot liquid.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base for the flour thickener.
Corn
Adds sweet corn flavour and body to the soup as it is pressed through the strainer.
Egg (in the method)
Enriches the soup and adds body as it sets gently in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Bring the soup to a boil again. Once the beaten egg is added, a hard boil can overcook it and make the soup grainy or curdled. Keep the heat controlled so the egg thickens smoothly.

“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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