Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Boiled Flour
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flour
Tie the flour in a piece of muslin to form a firm mass.
Place the mass in a pot of boiling water.
Let it boil from morning until bedtime.
Remove the mass from the water.
Let it dry overnight.
The next morning, remove the muslin.
Discard the thin rind of dough.
Grate some of the hard, dry mass into a powder using a nutmeg grater.
Make the milk pudding
Mix 1 to 3 tablespoons of the powder with a little milk to form a smooth paste.
Combine the paste with 1 pint of milk.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Stir to prevent scorching.
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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Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 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 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
- Wheat flour
- Forms the dry starchy mass that is grated into powder and thickens the milk.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid base that the flour powder thickens into a pudding.
The step that matters
Stir while bringing the mixture to a boil. The starch-thickened milk settles and scorches easily on the base of the pot, so constant stirring keeps it smooth and prevents burnt flavour.
“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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