How "cereal milk" became a flavor

When making a bowl of cereal, what comes first? Is it the cereal or the milk?

The age-old question remains open-ended to this day, so much so that it has fueled a so-called “cereal debate” online. Last year, players of the Chicago Bears weighed in on their go-to way to make a bowl of cereal. Reddit threads — like this one, titled, “People who pour the milk before the cereal probably do a lot of other weird stuff we aren’t aware of” — have conducted deep dives into people’s cereal eating preferences. And think pieces on why pouring milk first is the only acceptable way to enjoy cereal have been written en masse.

Regardless, whether you prefer to pour the cereal or milk first, there’s no denying that the real treat of eating a bowl of cereal is cereal milk. Made by steeping milk with toasted cereal, cereal milk is leftovers at its finest. In recent years, cereal milk has been popularized as its own flavor and ingredient, thanks to James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Christina Tosi. In November 2008, Tosi opened the very first Milk Bar location in New York City's East Village, where she also debuted her trademarked “Cereal Milk” flavor. Tosi initially used cereal milk as an ingredient to make panna cotta while working at Momofuku. At Milk Bar, Cereal Milk has been incorporated into cookies, milkshakes, pies and, most famously, soft-serve.

“It took trial, error and more than a few taste tests to land on that hard to describe, but instantly familiar sorta sweet, sorta corny milk flavor at the bottom of your cereal bowl,” per Milk Bar’s official recipe for its Cereal Milk. The beverage and humble ingredient is made by lightly toasting 2 3/4 cups of cornflakes and steeping it in 3 3/4 cups of cold milk for 20 minutes. Once the mixture is strained, it’s whisked together with brown sugar and salt before it can be enjoyed.

“Cereal Milk was by no means the first recipe that came out of our kitchens, but it is far and away the most popular and what we are known best for,” Tosi told Gourmet Traveller in 2019. “Drink it straight, pour it over more cereal, add it to your coffee in the morning, or turn it into panna cotta or ice-cream as in this recipe.”

Tosi has spurred a cereal milk obsession that's embraced in a myriad of contemporary desserts. There’s Cereal Milk Tiramisu, which includes layers of ladyfingers soaked in homemade cereal milk and topped with cereal mascarpone cream. There’s Cereal Milk Cake, filled with cereal milk cheesecake mousse and frosted in a cereal milk frosting. And there’s Cereal-infused vodka sodas, which uses vodka in lieu of milk to create a sugary and playful drink. Starbucks also hopped on the cereal milk craze with its recipes for Cereal Milk Coffee​.

The beauty of cereal milk goes beyond its flavor. It’s about memory, ritual and the hyper-specific intimacy of breakfast. It’s about childhood memories and intrigue. It’s about the pleasure of savoring in sugary, processed goodness with youthful glee. It’s about indulging in that early morning sugar-high that provided fuel for the first few hours of school, college and, now in adulthood, work.

In a 2015 article for Food52, Leslie Stephens wrote about her great love for breakfast cereal, which was forbidden in her “all-good-processed-things-free” household growing up: “When offered a bowl at a friend’s house, I’d make the most of my sugary gift: I picked every semblance of a nutrient from my Lucky Charms — just happy spoonfuls of marshmallows for me — and the end of a bowl of Coco Puffs was celebrated with gulps of the leftover sugary, chocolate-spiked milk.”

Indeed, eating cereal is a visceral experience — which is a fact backed by science. After conducting an online survey in 2016, consulting firm Sensory Spectrum divided ready-to-eat cereal into four so-called “dimensions”: sensory delight, health and fiber, sensory diversity and contrast, and weight management and heart health. They found that flake cereals with fruit “played more into people’s need for sensory pleasure,” Food Business News reported. 

“So (consumers are) not just talking about the sensory properties that they perceive,” explained Gail Vance Civille, CEO of Sensory Spectrum, Inc. “They are talking about how the cereal makes them feel.” Consumers view flake cereals “as more exiting and interesting than puff cereals,” she said. Certain flavors may also be “calming and comforting.”

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Cereal’s status as a comfort food has taken on new meaning amid the pandemic, in which carbs have been increasingly utilized to subdue feelings of loneliness and anxiety. GlobalData, a London-based data and analytics company, anticipated ready-to-eat breakfast cereals to approach $12.1 billion in 2020, with sales hiking up 12 percent from 2019, according to Food Business News. 

“With so many people now working from home instead of commuting, many consumers are no longer eating on-the-go or foodservice breakfasts,” Ryan Whittaker, consumer analyst at GlobalData, told the outlet. “Instead, many consumers are falling back on a mixture of comforting and healthier options at home.” 

Whittaker continued, “To many US consumers, breakfast cereals offer a way for them to impose order and familiarity on the day. For many, this can mean a moment of indulgence, revisiting a favorite from their childhood, or opting for a healthier option. The reduced demand for out-of-home consumption, reduced need to commute and heightened focus on health has convinced Americans to return to breakfast cereals in the morning.”

At its crux, cereal is a reliable pantry-staple, always there when you need it most. Same with cereal milk, which is one of those food indulgences that’s just too hard to give up. Cereal milk is versatile. It’s surprising. And its emotional effects are everlasting.