Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Boil ½ pint of milk.
In a bowl, blend 2 teaspoons of flour with ⅓ cup of cold milk until smooth.
Pour the flour mixture into the boiling milk, stirring constantly from the bottom.
Let it boil for 7 to 8 minutes.
Cool and season
Pour into a soup plate to cool.
Add sugar or salt to taste if desired.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that thickens into the pudding.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk as its starch swells when boiled, giving the pudding body.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring constantly from the bottom keeps it dispersed and prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, so the pudding thickens 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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