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Dessert

Farina Pudding

A milk-based pudding thickened with farina, enriched with butter, sugar, egg yolks, and beaten whites, flavored with vanilla and served cold with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Farina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil in a pot and add salt.

  2. Stir in 4 tablespoons of farina until it thickens.

  3. Add a small piece of butter and a little sugar.

  4. Stir in the yolks of 4 eggs.

  5. Fold in the beaten whites.

  6. Flavor with vanilla and serve cold with white sugar syrup.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Farina
Thickens the boiling milk into a soft, spoonable custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Folded in beaten, they add lightness and airiness to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the farina thickens.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten whites. Folding gently keeps the whites' trapped air intact; stirring or overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser pudding.

“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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