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To Make Grout Gruel

A gruel made from grouts, water, mace, white wine, sugar, currants, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,791 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Make Grout Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the grouts in water with mace until soft.

  2. Add white wine and sugar to taste.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in currants.

  4. Serve in a bowl with the bread arranged around it.

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. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

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

  2. White wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Mace + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grouts
Form the main body of the gruel, softening as they boil into a thick porridge.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the finished gruel.
White wine
Adds acidity and a light aroma to balance the sweetness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, currant, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, currant, bread. 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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