Skip to main content
Drink

Boiled Milk

A simple boiled milk beverage, optionally flavored with cinnamon or thickened with arrow-root, barley water, or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Pour the desired amount of milk into a clean saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat and boil for 2 to 5 minutes.

Cool the milk

  1. Cool by placing the pitcher in a pan of cold water and stir until cold.

  2. Set the pitcher on ice.

Modify the milk

  1. To modify the milk, boil arrow-root, barley water, or rice flour gruel with salt and water and a stick of cinnamon.

  2. Boil 2 tablespoons of milk-sugar with 1 pint of boiling water.

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. Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base of the drink, supplying liquid, protein and milk-sugar flavour.
Arrow-root
Thickens the liquid into a light gruel when boiled.
Rice flour
Thickens the liquid into a gruel when boiled with water.
Milk-sugar
Adds sweetness to the boiled liquid.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat and boil for 2 to 5 minutes. Milk scorches and sticks to the pan bottom if left unstirred over heat. Stirring spreads heat evenly, and boiling reduces the risk of spoilage from bacteria that survive pasteurization.

“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.

More boiled milk recipes

Pudding 6 See all 3 →

You might also like

Rice WaterRice Water82 recipesRice MilkRice Milk37 recipesBarley WaterBarley Water22 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes