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
Thicken the milk
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Sprinkle in enough flour, sago, or tapioca to thicken the milk while stirring briskly.
Add salt and sugar to taste, then stir.
Cook and serve
Cook for about 10 minutes.
Serve with cream and sugar, jam, or treacle.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a pudding.
- Flour
- Starch granules swell in hot liquid, thickening the milk into a soft pudding.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the mild, savoury-leaning flavour of the milk.
The step that matters
Sprinkling in the flour while stirring briskly. Starch added to hot liquid all at once forms lumps, because the outer granules swell and seal off the inside. Adding it gradually while stirring disperses the granules so they thicken smoothly.
“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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