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Soup

Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from corn, butter, flour, milk, and cream, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the corn from the cob.

  2. In a pot, add the corn to 1 quart of boiling water and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute while stirring.

  2. Add half of the corn pulp to the butter-flour mixture and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the remaining corn pulp, then add 1 pint of boiling milk and ½ pint of cream.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the main body and sweet flavour of the soup as it cooks down into pulp.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the soup as the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked briefly with butter before the liquid is added.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, softening the soup's texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in melted butter for a minute toasts away its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching, so the soup turns smooth when the liquid is added.

“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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