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Corn-flour Millc

A thickened milk dessert made with corn flour, eggs, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,336 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Corn-flour Millc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Add lemon rind or laurel leaf to milk and heat by the fire until flavored.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Mix corn flour with ½ teacup of milk to form a smooth paste.

  4. Beat in the eggs and stir the boiling milk into the corn flour mixture.

  5. Return to the saucepan, boil again, and stir for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Sweeten with honey, sugar, or treacle, and serve.

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. Milk + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickening and eggs set into.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving a smooth body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as the proteins cook.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture to the saucepan and stirring. Corn flour starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and eggs can scramble if overheated. Stirring constantly keeps the heat even and prevents lumps and curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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