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Milk Porridge

A simple warm milk porridge thickened with cornstarch or rice flour, sweetened with sugar and lightly salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Milk Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat until warm.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cornstarch or rice flour with a little cold milk to make a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the paste to the warm milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Add sugar and salt, and continue to cook until the mixture thickens.

  5. Serve warm.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy porridge.
Cornstarch or rice flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the porridge body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the porridge.

The step that matters

Adding the paste to the warm milk. Starch clumps if it hits hot liquid in one lump. Mixing it into cold milk first and adding it gradually while stirring constantly keeps the paste smooth as the mixture thickens.

“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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