Name: Boiled Milk
Ingredients: milk; arrow-root; barley water; rice flour; coarse sea salt; cinnamon stick; milk-sugar

Why it works: Barley and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the milk

Pour the desired amount of milk into a clean saucepan.
Stir over medium heat and bring to a boil for 2 to 5 minutes.
Cool the milk by placing the pitcher in a pan of cold water.
Stir until cold and then refrigerate.

Make the gruel

To modify the milk, boil arrow-root, barley water, or rice flour gruel with salt and water and a cinnamon stick.
Add 2 tablespoons of milk-sugar to each pint of boiling water used for the gruels.

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.

Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together568 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together127 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).