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Dessert

To Mull Milk

A thickened milk custard made by mixing warm milk with egg yolks and cinnamon, then simmering until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 312 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

To Mull Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with the cinnamon for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks well and add a little cold cream.

  4. Gradually pour the warm milk into the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Return the mixture to the pan and stir over low heat until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  6. Pour the mixture from one jug to another for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with dry toast or biscuits.

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. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk as they set, giving the drink a creamy, custard-like body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins curdle and it turns grainy and loses its smooth texture.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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