Why it works: Rye and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil 1 quart of water in a kettle.
In a bowl, sift 1 cup of meal and stir in enough water to make a smooth mixture.
Cook
Once the water is boiling, pour the meal mixture into the kettle. Stir well and let it boil until thick.
Add salt to taste.
Sprinkle in more meal, handful by handful, stirring continuously.
Cook for about 30 minutes until very thick and difficult to stir.
Serve
Serve with milk or molasses.
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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Rye + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together918 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Meal (indian or rye)
- Forms the thick body of the porridge as its starch thickens during boiling.
- Water
- Hydrates the meal so its starch can swell and set into a thick mush.
The step that matters
Sprinkling in more meal while stirring. Adding meal in small handfuls while stirring keeps it from clumping into lumps. Dry meal dumped in at once hydrates unevenly, so the porridge turns lumpy instead of smooth.
“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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