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Green-Corn Soup

A soup made from corn pulp, milk, onion, and corn starch, simmered and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Green-Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the corn cobs in water to cover.

  2. Scald the milk with the onion slice.

  3. Drain the water from the cobs and add 1 pint of the water to the corn pulp.

  4. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the onion from the milk.

  2. Dilute the corn starch with a little cold milk and cook it in the milk.

  3. Add the corn pulp, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  4. For a richer soup, stir in the beaten yolks of 2 eggs diluted with 1-2 tablespoons of cream before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn pulp
Forms the body of the soup and gives it its corn flavour and sweetness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rich body to the soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and less watery.
Onion
Adds a mild savoury aroma to the milk and is removed before the soup is finished.

The step that matters

Dilute the corn starch with cold milk before cooking. Starch dropped into hot liquid clumps as its outer layer gelatinises at once. Mixing it first with a little cold milk separates the granules, so they disperse evenly and thicken the soup smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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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