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Cream of Corn Soup

A creamy soup made with corn, onion, butter, flour, milk, and a dash of cayenne pepper.

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

Cream of Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop the corn and onion in a bowl until mushy.

  2. Cook the mixture in a covered kettle until the water is nearly evaporated.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the milk and bring to a simmer.

  2. Blend the butter, flour, sugar, and cayenne pepper, then add to the soup.

  3. Stir until it boils and thickens slightly, then serve hot.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour blend. Flour clumps if dropped in raw. Blending it with the butter first helps it disperse, and the soup must then be stirred until it boils so the starch thickens fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, flour, sugar, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, flour, sugar, milk, pepper. 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.

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