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
Prepare the corn
Scrape the corn from the cobs.
Boil the cobs in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes.
Remove the cobs.
Make the soup
Add the corn.
Boil for 15 minutes.
Stir in 2 quarts of rich milk.
Season with salt, pepper, and butter.
Thicken the soup with 2 tablespoons of flour.
Boil for 10 minutes.
Finish and serve
In a tureen, mix in the well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 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 corn flavor of the soup.
- Rich milk
- Supplies the creamy liquid and richness that make up most of the soup.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as its starch absorbs liquid and swells when heated.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the soup, adding richness and a smooth texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and rich flavor to the seasoned soup.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Beating them well and mixing them into the soup in the tureen, off the boil, helps them thicken smoothly.
“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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