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 ↓
Green Corn Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Grate the corn from the cobs.
Boil the cobs in enough water to cover them.
Remove the cobs.
Use the boiling water to stew the grated corn.
Add 1 quart of sweet milk. Let it boil.
Season with butter, 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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Corn
- Forms the body of the soup, and its starch thickens the liquid as it stews.
- Sweet milk
- Adds richness and creaminess, softening the corn flavour into a smooth soup.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a rounded, rich mouthfeel and flavour.
The step that matters
Stewing the grated corn in the boiling water. Corn starch needs sustained heat and time in liquid to swell and thicken the soup. Stopping early leaves it thin and starchy-tasting.
“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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