Skip to main content
Breakfast

Milk Porridge

A porridge made from oatmeal, water, milk, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Milk Porridge

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oatmeal

  1. Soak the oatmeal in water overnight.

  2. In the morning, strain and boil the water for half an hour.

Make the milk thickening

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour rubbed smooth in a little cold milk.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the thickened milk to the boiling water along with butter and salt.

  2. Boil well 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oatmeal
Forms the body of the porridge as its starch thickens during boiling.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the porridge.
Flour
Thickens the milk so it gives the porridge a smoother body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour rubbed smooth in a little cold milk.. Flour lumps form if it meets hot liquid without first being dispersed in cold milk. Starch granules need to separate evenly to 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.

More milk porridge recipes

French 5Arrowroot 4 See all 119 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes