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 Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the corn
Cut the corn from the cob.
In a pot, combine the corn and hot water; boil for 1 hour.
Pass the mixture through a colander.
Make the soup
In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to prevent lumps.
Add the corn pulp, cayenne pepper, salt, boiling milk, and cream.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes before serving.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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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).
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 flavor of the soup once pulped.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the soup.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup slightly when cooked briefly with the butter.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and softens the texture of the soup.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Flour added to hot fat must be stirred constantly so its starch coats each grain evenly; otherwise it clumps into lumps instead of thickening the soup 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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