Name: Flour-ball
Ingredients: 1 pound good wheat flour (unbolted is best); milk (for mixing); 1 pint milk (for whey); 2 teaspoons Fairchild’s essence of pepsin

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

1 pound good wheat flour (unbolted is best)
milk (for mixing)
1 pint milk (for whey)
2 teaspoons Fairchild’s essence of pepsin

Directions

Make the flour ball

Tie the flour tightly in a strong pudding bag.
Place the bag in a saucepan of water and boil for 10 hours.
When cold, remove the cloth and cut away the soft outer covering.
Grate the hard, baked interior into a powder.

Thicken and prepare whey

To use, mix the required powder with 1 tablespoon of milk to form a smooth paste.
Add a second tablespoon of milk, mixing until creamy.
Stir this mixture into the total quantity of liquid for the meal.
For whey, heat 1 pint of milk until warm.
Stir in 2 teaspoons of Fairchild’s essence of pepsin and let it stand until firm.
Beat with a fork until the curd is finely divided and 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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + wheytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together39 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Milk + wheytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together63 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 starchy mass that is grated into powder to thicken liquids.
Milk: Makes a smooth paste with the powder and carries it evenly into the liquid.
Fairchild’s essence of pepsin: Enzyme that sets warm milk into a firm curd for whey.

“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.