Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓
Miek Porridge
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the flour
Tie the desired amount of flour in a muslin bag or towel and boil for 4 to 5 hours.
Bake the bag until the flour is dry in a 300°F (150°C) oven.
Grate 2 tablespoons of the dried flour and mix it with cold water to form a paste.
Make the porridge
Add the paste to 1 pint of boiling milk or boiling water.
Boil for 10 minutes.
If using water, add condensed milk made with 1 part condensed milk to 4 parts water.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt for every quart of boiling milk or water.
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.
-
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk 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
- Forms the thickened body of the porridge as its starch cooks and swells in the liquid.
- Milk
- Adds richness and body, and its proteins and sugars give a softer, creamier texture.
The step that matters
Dry the flour before making the paste. Flour that is not fully dried and then grated may clump or thicken unevenly when stirred into boiling liquid, so the paste must be smooth and the flour properly dry.
“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.
More flour porridge recipes
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.