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Corn Soup

A simple soup made from corn, onion, milk, and butter, finished with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the corn

  1. Cook the corn in cold water for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot.

  2. Cook the onion until light brown.

  3. Add the flour, salt, and white pepper.

  4. Gradually stir in the milk.

  5. Add the cooked corn to the mixture.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolk and place it in a soup tureen.

  2. Pour the hot soup slowly over the egg, then mix well.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Corn
Provides the main body and natural sweetness of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the soup is built on.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup has body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the soup.
Onion
Adds a savory aroma and depth when cooked until light brown.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Pour the hot soup slowly over the egg yolk. Adding hot soup gradually warms the yolk gently so it blends in smoothly. Pouring too fast or without stirring can cause the egg to scramble into small cooked bits.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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