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Cinnamon Milk Drink

A warm or cold drink made by boiling cinnamon sticks in milk and sweetening with sugar, optionally spiced with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cinnamon Milk Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil cinnamon sticks in 1 pint of new milk until it has a pleasant flavor.

  2. Sweeten the milk with sugar to taste.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

  4. For added benefit in cases of diarrhea, add a little brandy.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

New milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the cinnamon flavor and becomes the drink.
Cinnamon sticks
Infuse the milk with their warm, aromatic flavor as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the warm spice flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the cinnamon sticks in the milk. Heating the milk lets the cinnamon's aromatic compounds dissolve into the fat and liquid. Boiling too briefly gives a weak flavor, while overboiling can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pan.

“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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