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Flour-ball

A thickening agent made by boiling a flour ball, grating it, and mixing with milk to form a paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare 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.

Make the curd

  1. Rub the required quantity of powder with 1 tablespoon of milk into a smooth paste.

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

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

  4. 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 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.

  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).

  4. Flour + wheytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. 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
Its baked, grated interior becomes a powder that adds body to the creamy mixture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the pepsin turns into a firm curd.
Fairchild's essence of pepsin
An enzyme that clots the milk into a set curd.

The step that matters

Let the pepsin set the milk undisturbed. Pepsin clots milk by breaking down its proteins so they bond into a curd. It works best when the milk is warm rather than boiling, and it needs time to set. Stirring or moving the milk before it firms can break up the curd and leave it weak.

“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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