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 broth
In a soup pot, combine the ham, veal, calf's feet, and pepper with water (or milk).
Boil until the meat is ready to fall from the bone.
Strain the liquid into a clean pot.
Boil the fowl pieces with the veal and feet.
Prepare the corn
Once the soup is well boiled and strained, cook the sweet corn in another pot.
Cut the grains from the cob and mix with fresh butter and pepper.
Finish and serve
Stir the corn mixture into the strained soup and boil a little longer before serving.
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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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,264 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet corn
- Supplies the main flavour and sweetness, and its starch thickens the soup as it cooks.
- Calf's feet
- Their collagen breaks down during long boiling, giving the broth body and a silky mouthfeel.
- Veal knuckle
- Bone and connective tissue release gelatin and savoury depth into the broth.
- Boiled ham
- Adds salty, smoky meaty flavour to the broth.
- Fowl
- Long simmering draws flavour and richness from the tough meat into the broth.
- Fresh butter
- Adds richness and a rounded, buttery aroma to the corn.
The step that matters
Boiling the broth until the meat falls from the bone. Collagen in the feet and knuckle only turns into gelatin with long, steady simmering. Stopping early leaves a thin broth with little body and tough meat.
“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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