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Soup

Corn Soup

A soup made with chicken stock, corn, black pepper, celery salt, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the water from the cooked chicken on the fire.

  2. Add the meat and bones to the stock and simmer until the meat leaves the bones.

  3. Strain the mixture and season with black pepper and celery salt.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the cooked corn and cook slowly for one hour.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the sweet cream.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Water from cooked chicken
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Meat and bones from stock
Release savory flavour and gelatin into the liquid, giving it body.
Cooked corn
Adds sweetness and thickens the soup slightly as it cooks slowly.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream just before serving. Dairy held at a simmer for a long time can separate or turn grainy. Adding the cream at the end keeps the soup smooth and its flavour fresh.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, pepper, corn, cream):

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, pepper, corn, cream. 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.

More corn soup recipes

Green 46Chicken 11Sweet 4Cream 3Creamed 3Creole 3 See all 204 →

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