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Corn Soup

A creamy soup made from canned corn, water, milk, onion, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Drain the liquid from the can of corn.

  2. Add the corn to 1 pint of boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, scald 1 pint of milk with a small slice of onion.

  2. Add the corn mixture to the milk and strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the mixture to the boiler, add 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour, and blend well.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste, boil for 10 minutes, 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. 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
Provides the main body and sweet flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor and mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.

The step that matters

Blending the butter and flour into the mixture. Flour must be fully blended in so it hydrates evenly; if it is left in lumps, it stays as raw pockets and the soup turns grainy. Keeping the soup gently heated during and after thickening also helps the starch swell smoothly without scorching the milk.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

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

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