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Corn Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with corn, butter, flour, stock, and sweet milk, seasoned with salt and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the corn, soup stock, and hot sweet milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve or colander.

  2. Season with salt and nutmeg before serving.

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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavor into the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a creamy body when cooked with the butter.
Corn
Provides the main sweet corn flavor and body of the soup.
Soup stock
Forms the savory liquid base that the soup is built on.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Stirring while adding the liquids. Adding the stock and hot milk to the flour-butter roux while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened soup.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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