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Cream of Corn

A creamy corn soup made with corn, water, milk, butter, flour, onion, egg yolks, and seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Combine corn and water in a pot and simmer for 5 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a separate stew pan over medium heat.

  2. Whisk flour and pepper into the melted butter, then add minced onion and sieved egg yolks.

  3. Gradually stir in 3 cups of milk and cook until bubbling.

  4. Mix in the corn and the additional cup of milk, and let it simmer briefly.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve and season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, creamy base.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help emulsify and thicken the cream base.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the milk. Adding milk slowly to the butter and flour roux lets starch granules disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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