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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with fresh or canned corn, milk, onion, butter, flour, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Corn Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the corn off the cob or chop the canned corn.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and add the chopped onion; cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain out the onion and thicken the milk with butter and flour; boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Combine the thickened milk with the mashed corn in a soup pot.

  4. Add chopped parsley, salt, and pepper; cook for 3 minutes.

  5. Beat well and serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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, sweetness and flavour of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour thicken the milk.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy, smooth base.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat and milk long enough to swell and thicken the liquid evenly; adding it raw or stopping early leaves the soup lumpy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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