Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the egg yolk into the milk with salt.
Gradually stir this mixture into the flour to create a smooth batter.
Cook and serve
Heat ½ pint of milk until scalding hot.
Pour the batter into the hot milk while stirring continuously to keep it smooth.
Allow it to thicken without boiling, then serve immediately.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour 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
- Thickens the milk as its starch swells on heating, giving the pudding body.
- Egg yolk
- Adds richness and helps enrich the custard-like texture of the pudding.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pudding.
The step that matters
Pour the batter into the hot milk while stirring continuously. Stirring disperses the batter as it meets the hot milk, so the starch swells evenly. Without constant stirring, flour clumps form lumps that cannot be smoothed out once set.
“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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