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Laboratory Milk

A sterilized milk and barley-water mixture sweetened with milk-sugar and lime-water, divided into eight feedings for a child.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Laboratory Milk

8 feedings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sterilize the milk and barley-water for 30 minutes.

Mix and feed

  1. Combine all ingredients and divide into 8 feedings.

  2. Feed the child every 2 hours.

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. Barley + limetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  4. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + limetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together700 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Supplies protein and fat, the main nourishment in the formula.
Barley-water
Forms the liquid base and dilutes the milk to a thinner consistency.
Milk-sugar
Adds sweetness and provides readily used energy.

The step that matters

Sterilize the milk and barley-water for 30 minutes. Heat kills bacteria that can multiply in milk-based liquids and make an infant ill. Sterilizing both liquids before mixing keeps contamination from being added during preparation, so the full 30 minutes matters.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, barley, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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