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Milk Porridge

A simple hot milk porridge made by mixing flour into heated milk, optionally sweetened with sugar and flavored with sherry or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Milk Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickener

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Add more milk to the flour mixture to thin it out.

Make the porridge

  1. In a small saucepan, heat the milk over boiling water until it is very hot.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. If desired, add sugar and sherry wine or brandy according to taste.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + sherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,643 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy porridge as it cooks.
Rich sweet milk
Forms the body of the porridge and carries its mild, creamy flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Thinning it with cold milk first and stirring constantly keeps it smooth as the starch swells and thickens the porridge.

“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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