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 corn
Score each row of kernels on the corn with a sharp knife.
Scrape out the corn milk using the back of the knife.
Make the soup
Boil the corn cobs in 1 quart of boiling water for a few minutes.
Remove the cobs and add the scraped corn to the water.
Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.
Stir in 1 pint of milk and 1 egg-sized piece of butter.
Bring to a gentle boil and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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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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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 sweetness of the soup, with starch from the kernels thickening the liquid.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the broth.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and smoother texture.
The step that matters
Bring to a gentle boil after adding the milk. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pot or curdle if it boils hard, so heat should stay gentle once the milk and butter go in.
“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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