Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sterilized Milk
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pour fresh cow's milk into a glass jar.
Add one-third cup pure water for a child under three months old.
Optionally, add a small amount of sugar.
Heat
Place the jar in a kettle or pan of cold water.
Leave the jar cover loose and bring the water to a boil.
Boil for 10 minutes, then screw down the cover tightly and boil for another 10 minutes.
Cool and store
Remove from heat and allow to cool slowly in the water.
Once partly cool, refrigerate or place in a cool place, keeping it tightly covered except when pouring out milk.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 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
- Cow's milk
- Forms the whole liquid base, supplying the body and flavour of the finished milk.
- Pure water
- Dilutes the milk, lowering its concentration of proteins and sugars.
The step that matters
Boiling with the cover loose, then sealed. Boiling heats the milk enough to kill harmful microbes. The cover must stay loose at first so steam can escape and the jar does not crack or pop, then be screwed down for the second boil.
“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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