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Raisin Porridge

A simple raisin porridge made by boiling raisins, adding milk, thickening with flour, and seasoning with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the raisins.

  2. Boil the raisins in ½ cup of water for 30 minutes until the water evaporates.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk and bring to a boil.

Make the porridge

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a little cold milk to make a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk until thickened to custard consistency.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in ¼ teaspoon of salt.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Raisins
Provide the main sweetness and flavor, and soften as they simmer in the water.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy, custard-like texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving body to the porridge.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the boiling milk. Flour must be fully smoothed in cold milk first, or it clumps. Stirring it into hot milk lets the starch swell evenly, so the mixture thickens smoothly rather than 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.

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