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
Mash the corn as fine as possible and cook it for 15 minutes in 1 quart of milk in a double boiler.
Cook the onion in the butter in a frying pan for 10 minutes, then add the flour and cook until frothy, without browning.
Stir this mixture into the corn and milk, add salt and pepper, and cook for 10 minutes longer.
Finish and serve
Rub the soup through a fine sieve and return it to the heat.
Beat the egg yolks well, add the remaining ½ pint of milk, and stir this into the soup.
Cook for 1 minute longer, stirring constantly, and serve immediately.
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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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Forms the main body and sweet flavour of the soup once mashed and strained.
- Butter
- Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the soup base.
- Flour
- Cooked in the butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
- Milk
- Makes up the liquid of the soup and adds creaminess.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the soup as they gently cook in the hot liquid.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the soup boils. Stir the yolk mixture in well and keep the soup below a boil while stirring constantly for the final minute.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, butter, flour, egg, pepper):
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- Asparagusfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, butter, flour, egg, 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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