Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓
Minute Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Butter a saucepan and add 1 quart of milk, salted to taste. Bring to a boil.
Slowly sift in 1 pint of flour while stirring briskly.
Add 2 well-beaten eggs and stir quickly for a moment.
Serve
Serve with cream and sugar as sauce.
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 + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour 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 thick body of the pudding as its starch sets with the hot milk.
- Eggs
- Add richness and help set the pudding into a tender, custard-like texture.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
The step that matters
Sifting in the flour while stirring briskly. Flour added slowly to hot liquid while stirring disperses evenly and prevents lumps. Adding it all at once or without stirring lets starch clump together, leaving a lumpy, uneven texture.
“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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