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Frumenty

A boiled wheat dish cooked with water, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and salt, sometimes enriched with egg yolks or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Frumenty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the wheat

  1. Wet the wheat slightly and place it in a coarse bag, then beat the bag with a stick until the husk loosens.

  2. Wash the wheat thoroughly, changing the water 5-6 times until free of bran.

  3. Put the wheat in a stew-pan with plenty of water, cover, and bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) until soft.

  4. Let the wheat cool; it will form a jelly-like consistency.

Make and serve

  1. When ready to serve, combine the wheat with milk in a pan to achieve a rice-milk consistency, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Near boiling, stir in a smooth mixture of flour and a little milk, then add sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Once it boils, it is ready to serve.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

White wheat
Forms the thick body of the dish as its starches soften and swell during slow baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the cooked wheat into a rice-milk consistency.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving a smoother, more stable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the mild, nutty flavour of the wheat.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk-wheat mixture constantly. Milk and starch scorch easily on the bottom of a pan over heat, and constant stirring keeps the proteins and sugars from sticking and burning while the mixture thickens.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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