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
Make the pudding
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 and cook for about 10 minutes.
Serve
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 and provides body, richness and sweetness for the pudding.
- Flour
- Its starch swells in hot liquid and thickens the milk into a pudding.
- Sago or tapioca
- Its starch thickens the milk and gives the pudding a slightly chewy texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the pudding.
The step that matters
Sprinkle in the flour, sago, or tapioca while stirring briskly. Starch added to hot liquid clumps easily if it lands in one spot. Stirring briskly disperses the grains so they hydrate evenly and the milk thickens smoothly rather than becoming lumpy.
“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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