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Green Corn Soup

A hearty soup made with beef or veal bone, corn, milk, and optional butter and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Corn Soup

Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil the soup bone in 1 gallon of water.

  2. Add coarse sea salt and skim the surface carefully.

  3. Cook the meat for 1 hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the scraped corn and season with white pepper and parsley.

  2. When the corn is tender, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 1 cup of milk.

  3. If the soup bone is not very rich, add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Optionally, add tomatoes for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk and soup slightly, giving the broth a smoother body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, rounding out the flavor of the broth.
Corn
Provides the main sweetness and fresh corn flavor, and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and meaty flavor into the water, forming the base of the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with the milk first and adding it once the corn is tender lets it disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, corn, white pepper, parsley, flour, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, corn, white pepper, parsley, flour, milk, butter. 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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