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Plum Pottage

A savory plum and raisin stew made with veal and beef broth, French rolls, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pottage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pottage

  1. In a pot, combine veal broth and beef broth.

  2. Add stoned prunes and crumbled French rolls, then rub through a fine cloth.

  3. Mix in stoned raisins, currants, lemon juice, cinnamon, mace, cloves, red port, claret, grated lemon peel, and lump sugar.

  4. Simmer the mixture for one hour.

  5. Add a little cochineal to achieve a nice color.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen, ensuring it has the consistency of water gruel.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stoned prunes
Breaks down into the pulp that thickens the pottage and gives it body and sweetness.
French rolls
Crumbled bread that, rubbed through the cloth with the prunes, adds body and thickens the broth.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture as they soften during the simmer.
Red port
Adds sweetness, depth and a fortified wine flavour to the liquid.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Veal broth
Forms the savory liquid base that the fruit and bread are cooked into.

The step that matters

Rubbing the prunes and rolls through a fine cloth. Pressing the soaked fruit and bread through a fine cloth separates the pulp from skins and lumps, giving a smooth, evenly thickened texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, raisin, lemon, cinnamon, mace, clove):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, raisin, lemon, cinnamon, mace, clove. 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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