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Dessert

Plain Farina Pudding

A simple pudding made from milk, farina, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, baked until brown and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Plain Farina Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk and add the sugar and cold left-over farina.

  2. Stir until thoroughly hot, then add the well-beaten eggs and vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until brown.

  2. Serve cold with milk or cream.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Farina
Provides body and structure, thickening the milk into a soft pudding base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown during baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and creamy texture.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking too little leaves the eggs runny and the pudding unset, while baking too long dries it out. Browning comes from the sugar caramelizing at the surface, so watch the colour and the set together.

“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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