Skip to main content
Main

With Corn-starch or Arrowroot

A thickened milk mixture made by adding cornstarch or arrowroot to milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and corn 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 ↓

With Corn-starch or Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the slurry

  1. Remove 1 cup of milk from the quart and set aside.

  2. In a small bowl, mix 3 tablespoons of corn-starch or arrowroot with the reserved milk until smooth.

Thicken the milk

  1. Bring the remaining milk to a boil.

  2. Gradually pour the thickened mixture into the boiling milk, stirring continuously.

  3. Continue to boil and stir for 5 minutes to cook the starch.

  4. Cool the mixture and add your desired flavoring.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a smooth, creamy texture.
Corn-starch or arrowroot
Swells in hot liquid and sets the milk into a thickened, smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the starch slurry to the boiling milk. Starch must be fully smooth before it goes in, and the milk must be stirred constantly as it is added. Otherwise lumps form. Boiling and stirring for the full time then cooks the starch so it thickens properly and loses its raw starchy 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes