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Corn Soup

A creamy corn soup made with corn, onion, water, flour, milk, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 soup base

  1. Cook the corn and onion in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Press the mixture through a coarse strainer to obtain 2 cups of stock and pulp.

Make the roux and thicken

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and add the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk and the corn stock, cooking until thickened.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Cook for one minute.

  5. Strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

Corn
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup as it cooks and is pressed into the stock.
Flour
Thickens the milk and stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter as a roux.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying the flour and adding richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, thickening into the soup as it cooks.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the soup and add thickening and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble and turn grainy if the soup is too hot or boiling when they go in. Adding them to a thickened base off the heat or at low heat, and cooking only briefly, keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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