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Dessert

Farina Hasty Pudding with Sauce

A pudding made from soaked farina cooked in milk, finished with a butter, sugar, and nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Farina Hasty Pudding with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the farina in just enough water to cover it for 2 hours.

  2. Heat the milk in a pot.

Cook the pudding

  1. Add salt to the milk and stir in the soaked farina.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally from the bottom.

  3. Add the butter.

  4. Let the pudding stand in hot water for 3 minutes after stirring.

  5. Turn the pudding out into a deep dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make a sauce by mixing butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Serve the pudding with the sauce.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Farina
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and soft structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the farina swells in and sets into a pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring while the pudding boils. Farina settles and can scorch on the bottom of the pot, so stirring from the bottom keeps it from sticking and burning while it thickens.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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