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Flour and Milk

A thickened milk made by boiling flour in water, drying, then adding to milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Flour and Milk

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Fill a small basin with flour and tie it tightly in a cloth.

  2. Immerse the cloth in a saucepan of water and boil slowly for 10 to 12 hours.

  3. After drying, add 1 tablespoon of the grated cooked flour to 1 pint of milk and boil.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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
Cooked flour, grated and added to milk, provides the starch that thickens the drink.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the grated cooked flour thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Boiling the floured cloth for 10 to 12 hours. Long, gentle boiling cooks the flour through so its starch can later thicken the milk. The cloth must stay submerged, or the flour can scorch or cook unevenly.

“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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