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 stock
Cut the corn from the cob.
Boil the cobs in water for at least an hour.
Reduce the water to about 3 quarts.
Cook the soup
Add the corn grains.
Boil until thoroughly cooked.
Stir in the milk, beaten eggs, salt, and pepper.
Continue boiling for a while longer.
Mix the butter with the flour.
Stir it in to thicken the soup.
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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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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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).
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 body of flavor and sweetness in the soup.
- Eggs
- Add richness and help give the soup a silkier, thicker texture when cooked.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavor.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.
The step that matters
Stir in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or unevenly, so mixing it with butter first and stirring it in gradually helps it disperse and thicken the soup smoothly rather than leaving lumps.
“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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