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Corn Flour Shape

A corn flour and milk shape made by boiling a mixture and setting it in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the corn flour with a little cold milk to form a paste.

  2. Add the sugar and essence of lemon to the mixture.

  3. Bring the 2 cups of milk to a boil in a clean pan.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in the corn flour mixture rapidly for 3 minutes once boiling.

Shape and serve

  1. Wet a shape or mold with cold water.

  2. Pour the corn flour mixture into the wet shape or mold.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Turn it out onto a plate.

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 set, smooth mass as it cooks and cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and softness to the set shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn flour mixture into boiling milk. Corn flour starch must be stirred in rapidly so it disperses evenly without lumps. Starch granules swell and thicken when heated, so the mixture needs constant stirring while it boils to thicken smoothly and set firmly once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, milk, 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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