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Corn Soup

A soup made with grated green corn, milk, water, flour, butter, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the corn base

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

Make the soup

  1. Bring the milk and onion to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour and butter together. Add a few tablespoons of boiling milk and stir until perfectly smooth.

  3. Add to the boiling milk. Cook for 8 minutes.

  4. Remove the onion and corn.

  5. Season with salt and pepper 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.

  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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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, when simmered, adds creaminess and richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form a smooth roux with the flour.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory aroma and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the milk. Adding the roux without first smoothing it with hot milk can leave lumps. Stirring until perfectly smooth before adding it to the boiling milk helps the flour starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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