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Cream of Corn

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Cook the corn in 1 pint of water for 1 hour.

  2. Run the corn through a fine sieve into a porcelain or aluminum kettle.

Make the soup

  1. Add a pinch of baking soda and 1 quart of sweet milk, then cook for 15 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of softened butter with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Add ½ cup of cream to the butter and flour mixture, then stir into the corn mixture.

  4. Cook for an additional 10 minutes, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  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 corn flavour of the soup.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the soup its creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness for a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Blending the butter and flour before adding them. Mixing the flour with softened butter into a smooth paste before stirring it in helps prevent lumps. Flour added dry to hot liquid clumps easily, while a well-blended roux-style mixture disperses evenly and thickens 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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