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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from grated corn, milk, water, flour, butter, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cook the corn in hot water for 30 minutes.

  2. Bring the milk and onion to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour and butter together well, then add 1 tablespoon of boiling milk.

  2. Stir until perfectly smooth, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Cook for 8 minutes.

  4. Remove the onion and add the corn.

  5. Season to taste and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Green corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, with the flour, creates a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and combines with flour to form a smooth thickening paste.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling milk. Flour lumps form if the paste is not mixed smooth before it meets the hot liquid, because starch on the outside of a clump gels before the inside can disperse. Blending the flour with butter and a little hot milk first, then stirring until smooth, lets the starch disperse evenly so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, flour, butter. 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.

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

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