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Milk Porridge

A thickened milk porridge made with bread, butter, and a starch such as tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of milk with 12 oz. of bread.

  2. Add tapioca, arrowroot, sago, or rice as prescribed.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

  4. Stir in 1 oz. of butter until melted.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + arrowroottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Breaks down into the milk to give the porridge its body and thickness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks into a soft, creamy porridge.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished porridge.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter. 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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