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
Combine the corn and boiling water in a pot and cook for 1 hour.
Pass the mixture through a colander back into the pot.
Add sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.
In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the soup.
Finish with eggs and milk
Scald the milk and gradually add it to the beaten eggs.
Once the butter is melted, stir the egg and milk mixture into the soup.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Corn
- Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the soup.
- Eggs
- Thicken the soup gently as they set when stirred into the hot liquid.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and softness to the soup's texture.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid with the butter.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the texture.
The step that matters
Stirring the egg and milk mixture into the soup. Eggs set when they meet hot liquid, so they can curdle into lumps if added too fast or too hot. Gradually tempering the eggs with warm milk and stirring steadily 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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