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Soup

Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from corn, sweet milk, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cream of Corn Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Heat the corn in a saucepan and strain it through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. In another pot, boil the sweet milk.

  2. Thicken the milk with the melted butter and flour, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the strained corn to the thickened milk and season with salt and pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 flavor and body of the soup.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened milk.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with the melted butter and flour, stirring constantly.. Flour needs to be stirred continuously while it heats in the milk, otherwise it can clump and leave lumps in the soup instead of a smooth, evenly thickened base.

“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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