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Flour-ball

A thickening agent made by boiling flour in water, then grating the cooked interior into powder and mixing with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Flour-ball

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flour ball

  1. Tie the flour tightly in a strong pudding bag.

  2. Place the bag in a saucepan of water and boil for 2 hours.

  3. When cold, remove the cloth and cut away the soft outer covering.

  4. Grate the hard, baked interior to powder.

Thicken and prepare the whey

  1. To use, mix the required powder with 1 tablespoon of milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add a second tablespoon of milk, mixing until creamy.

  3. Stir this mixture into the total quantity of liquid for the meal.

  4. For whey, heat 1 pint of milk until warm.

  5. Stir in 2 teaspoons of Fairchild’s essence of pepsin and let it stand until firm.

  6. Beat with a fork until the curd is finely divided, then strain.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Wheat flour
Baked into a hard, dry mass that is grated to a powder which thickens liquids when mixed in.
Milk
Wets the flour powder into a smooth paste and carries it evenly into the liquid.
Essence of pepsin
Enzyme that sets the warm milk into a firm curd for the whey.

The step that matters

Stirring the powder into the liquid. Mixing the flour powder first into a smooth paste with milk prevents lumps, because dry starch clumps when it hits liquid directly. Thickening happens as the starch granules swell with heat and moisture.

“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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