Skip to main content
Drink

Corn Starch

A thickened milk made by mixing corn starch with cold liquid, then adding to boiling milk and seasoning.

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

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 Starch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch with enough cold water or cold milk to make a smooth paste.

  2. Pour the paste into ½ pint of boiling milk, stirring constantly.

  3. Add a little coarse sea salt and sweeten to taste.

  4. Incorporate any essence or spice preferred.

  5. Set aside to cool, stirring carefully to prevent scorching.

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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and body to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Pour the paste into the boiling milk while stirring constantly. Starch clumps if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Stirring disperses the granules so they swell evenly and the mixture thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes