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
Combine corn and water in a pot and boil for 30 minutes.
Add milk and bring to a boil.
In a small bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth; stir the mixture into the boiling soup.
Season with pepper and salt, then boil again.
Finish with eggs
Beat the eggs in a tureen; pour the boiling soup over the eggs while stirring briskly.
Stir the soup often while cooking.
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 sweet flavor and body of the soup.
- Milk
- Adds richness and creaminess to the soup base.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the soup.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it heats.
- Eggs
- Enrich and thicken the soup when poured in while hot.
The step that matters
Pouring the boiling soup over the eggs. If the soup is poured in too fast or without constant stirring, the eggs can scramble into lumps instead of blending smoothly and thickening the soup evenly.
“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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