Name: Corn Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart water; 1 soup bone; 8 tablespoons corn; 8 tablespoons tomatoes; 3 pints milk; 3 rolled crackers

Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

In a large pot, combine water, soup bone, corn, and tomatoes.
Boil for 1.5 hours.

Add the milk and finish

In a separate pot, bring the milk to a boil.
Stir the rolled crackers into the boiling milk.
Add the milk and cracker mixture to the soup.
Season 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.

Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,226 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

Corn: Provides the main sweet, starchy vegetable flavor and body of the soup.
Milk: Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.
Rolled crackers: Thicken the milk mixture, adding body to the soup.
Soup bone: Releases savory flavor and gelatin into the water during long simmering.