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Flour for Summer Complaint

A thickened milk made by boiling a flour ball and grating it into the milk, seasoned with salt and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flour for Summer Complaint

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flour ball

  1. Tie the flour tightly in a cloth.

  2. Boil in water for four to five hours.

  3. Remove the cloth to get a hard, firm ball of flour.

Make the milk

  1. When ready to serve, boil some fresh milk.

  2. Grate enough of the flour ball into the milk to thicken it.

  3. Season with a little salt and cinnamon.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Flour
Forms a firm ball when boiled and thickens the milk when grated into it.
New milk
Provides the liquid base that the grated flour thickens.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour ball. The cloth must be tied tightly so the flour holds its shape during the long boil. Loose wrapping lets the flour break apart, so it cannot be grated later to thicken the milk.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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