Name: Gruel for Infants
Ingredients: 1 pint goat's milk; 2 hard-boiled egg yolks; 1 pint boiling water; a little salt or sugar

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gruel for Infants

Ingredients

1 pint goat's milk
2 hard-boiled egg yolks
1 pint boiling water
a little salt or sugar

Directions

Prepare

Boil the eggs until hard, then remove the yolks and grind them into a fine powder.
In a bowl, combine the goat's milk and boiling water.

Mix and serve

Add the powdered egg yolks and a little salt or sugar to taste.
Mix well and administer using a nursing bottle.

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 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

Goat's milk: Forms the liquid base and adds fat and milk sugars for body and mild sweetness.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Add fat and richness, giving the gruel a fuller flavour and smoother 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.