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 ↓
Hasty Pudding-, or Farmer's Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flour lumps
Beat the egg until very light.
Add enough flour to moisten the egg and rub it through your hands until it forms fine dry lumps like bread crumbs.
Cook and serve
Bring the milk to a boil in a pot.
Stir in enough of the flour mixture to thicken the milk.
Serve with butter, sugar, and rich cream if available.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Egg
- Beaten egg coats the flour, forming the fine lumps that later thicken the milk.
- Flour
- Starch thickens the hot milk, giving the pudding its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour lumps thicken into a pudding.
The step that matters
Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour added to boiling milk can clump if stirred in too quickly or in large amounts. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the milk smoothly.
“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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