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Dessert

Farina Pudding

A pudding made from milk, farina, almonds, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites, served cold with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Farina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk until nearly boiling.

  2. Slowly stir in the farina and boil until thick.

  3. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and finely chopped almonds.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and mix thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with boiled custard.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Farina
Thickens the milk into a firm, spoonable pudding as it cooks.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and airiness to the pudding.
Almonds
Finely chopped, they add nutty flavor and body to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon and the starchy farina.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to soft peaks and gently folded in. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the pudding turns dense instead of light.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Milletfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, egg. 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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