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Preserve

Cold Farina Pudding

A chilled pudding made from milk, farina, sugar, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cold Farina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix farina, salt, and ½ cup milk in a bowl.

  2. Bring the remaining milk to a boil in a saucepan.

Make the pudding

  1. Stir the farina mixture into the boiling milk.

  2. Cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add sugar and flavoring, or jelly if using.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and let cool.

  2. Serve cold with sugar and milk.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 set body.
Milk
Forms the base of the pudding and provides moisture and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the farina into the boiling milk. Starch granules clump if added to hot liquid all at once or left unstirred, leaving lumps. Stirring while cooking spreads the starch evenly so it thickens smoothly as it gelatinizes.

“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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