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Soup

Corn Souf

A creamy corn soup made with milk, butter, flour, and salt, served hot with oyster crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Souf

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until boiling.

  2. Add the corn and heat through without cooking.

  3. Remove from heat and strain through a colander and then a sieve.

  4. Return the strained mixture to the pot and bring to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the butter, flour, and salt together with a little milk until smooth, then add to the soup.

  2. Stir constantly until slightly thickened.

  3. Serve hot with oyster crackers.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Corn
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup once strained.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds creaminess and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats and stirs, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture. Flour lumps if dropped in dry or added to hot liquid without being blended smooth first. Mixing it with a little milk before adding it, then stirring constantly, lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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