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Milk Porridge

Milk porridge made by cooking milk with a thickener, served with bread and butter, accompanied by barley water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Milk Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare milk porridge by cooking the milk with the chosen thickener (tapioca, arrow root, sago, or rice) until thickened.

  2. Serve with 12 oz. of bread and 1 oz. of butter.

  3. Accompany with barley water.

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. Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 thickener swells into a creamy porridge.
Tapioca, arrow root, sago, or rice
Starch that thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the porridge its body.
Bread
Serving accompaniment that adds bulk and soaks up the porridge.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk with the thickener until thickened. Starch granules need heat and steady stirring to swell and gelatinise; too little heat leaves the porridge thin and grainy, while sticking or scorching can occur if the milk is left unattended.

“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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