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Dessert

Thickened Milk

A thickened milk dessert made with milk, flour, egg white, and optional salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Thickened Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the thickened milk

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with the cold milk until smooth.

  3. Pour the scalded milk onto the flour mixture and return it to the double boiler.

  4. Stir well and cook thoroughly.

  5. Season with salt and sugar if desired.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the thickened milk mixture over the egg white and mix thoroughly.

  3. 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-filled texture.
Egg white
Beaten to stiff peaks, it adds lightness and airiness to the finished mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the egg white is folded into.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture thoroughly. Raw flour tastes pasty and will not reach full thickness until its starch has gelatinized in hot liquid. Stirring while it heats prevents lumps, and cooking it through removes the raw flour taste.

“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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