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Dessert

Corn Flour Milk

A sweetened milk thickened with corn flour and flavored with lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Flour Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Cut the rind of ½ lemon very thinly and add it to 1 pint of milk.

  2. Heat the milk in an enamelled saucepan until it is nicely flavored, then remove the lemon rind.

  3. Bring the milk to a boil.

Make the thickened milk

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of corn flour with ½ cup of milk until smooth, then add 2 well-beaten eggs.

  2. Strain the boiling milk into the corn flour mixture and pour it back into the saucepan.

  3. Boil again, stirring well for 5 minutes.

  4. Sweeten to taste with sugar or honey.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable custard as it boils.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the mixture into a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the base of the drink and carries the lemon flavor.
Lemon rind
Adds aroma and a fresh citrus flavor to the milk.

The step that matters

Boil again, stirring well for 5 minutes. Corn flour starch only thickens fully when brought to a boil and stirred constantly, which keeps it smooth. Stopping early or not stirring can leave a raw starchy taste or lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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