Skip to main content
Main

Green Corn Soup

A soup made from corn kernels, milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Corn Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn with a sharp knife.

  2. Boil the cobs in enough cold water to cover for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the water.

  4. Cook the corn pulp in the corn water for 20 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the seasonings.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Mix into the hot milk.

  5. After 10 minutes, add the corn and liquid to the milk mixture.

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.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Corn
Provides the main sweet flavour and body of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour lumps form if it clumps before liquid is added. Cooking flour in fat and whisking it into hot liquid helps starch disperse evenly, giving a smooth, thickened soup.

“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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipesCornmeal PuddingCornmeal Pudding32 recipes