Skip to main content
Drink

Indian Corn Flour

A thickened milk beverage made with Indian corn flour, milk, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Indian Corn Flour

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the Indian corn flour with fresh milk.

  2. Add the boiling milk and stir over the heat for four minutes.

  3. Sweeten with sifted loaf sugar.

  4. Stir in the good cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Indian corn flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly set texture as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to the thickened milk.
Good cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the boiling milk and stir over the heat. Cornflour starch needs heat and constant stirring to swell and thicken evenly. Stopping or stirring too little can leave lumps or a thin, uneven texture.

“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.

You might also like