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Buttermilk As an Infant Food

A thickened milk mixture made with flour and sugar, boiled and served to infants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Buttermilk As an Infant Food

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. In a pot, mix the milk and flour.

  2. Heat gradually, stirring constantly until it boils several times.

  3. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

Bottle

  1. Pour into bottles or jars.

  2. Shake if it becomes lumpy.

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

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the sugar sweetens.
Rice flour or barley flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the drink body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the liquid to balance the flavor.

The step that matters

Heat gradually while stirring constantly. Flour can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pot if heated fast or left unstirred. Gentle heat with constant stirring lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the milk smoothly.

“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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