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Soup

Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from corn, onion, flour, milk, butter, and optional 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

Prepare the corn

  1. Cook the corn in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Press the corn through a coarse strainer to obtain 1 cup of stock and pulp.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, cook the chopped onion in melted butter until light brown.

  2. Add the corn stock and pulp to the onion and stir in the flour.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. If using, beat the egg yolks and add them to the soup, cooking for one more minute.

  5. Strain the soup and 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 kernels
Provide the main flavor and, once pressed, the stock and pulp that give the soup its body.
Flour
Thickens the soup with the milk and stock as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that thickens with the flour as it is stirred.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavor as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enriches the soup and adds further thickening and richness when added at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while stirring constantly. Flour mixed into liquid can clump if the milk is added all at once. Adding it slowly while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed so the soup thickens smoothly as it heats.

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.

More corn soup recipes

Green 46Chicken 11Sweet 4Cream 3Creamed 3Creole 3 See all 204 →

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