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To Preserve Milk

Preserve milk by adding a small piece of horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

To Preserve Milk

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a small piece of horseradish into a pan of milk. This will help keep the milk sweet.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Milk + horsetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + radishtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish (in the method)
Its compounds are said to help keep the milk fresh, though this is a traditional claim rather than established science.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, horse. 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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