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Farinaceous Milk

A thickened milk made by mixing flour with cold milk, then adding hot milk and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Farinaceous Milk

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blend the flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Mix the flour mixture with the hot milk.

  3. Boil for five minutes, stirring carefully to prevent burning.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Well-baked flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets when heated in the liquid.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens, giving body and a rich, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes, stirring carefully. Flour starch only swells and thickens fully once it reaches a boil. Milk solids and sugars settle and scorch on the base of the pan, so constant gentle stirring keeps the sauce smooth and unburnt.

“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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