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
Cut the grains off the corn and scrape the cob.
Cover the corn with water and boil until fully cooked.
Make the soup
Add 2 quarts of milk and bring to a boil.
Stir in 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour until combined.
Let it boil for 10 minutes.
Pour the soup over 3 beaten egg yolks and serve.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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 flavour and body of the soup.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its creamy texture.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the soup, adding richness and a smooth texture.
The step that matters
Pour the soup over the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Adding the hot soup to beaten yolks gradually, while stirring, tempers them so the soup stays smooth and thickens gently.
“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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