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Savory Porridge

A porridge made from finely chopped leftover roast meat, onions, herbs, celery, bread crumbs, butter, flour, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savory Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Chop the leftover meat extremely fine and rub it through a coarse sieve.

  2. Skim the fat from the liquor in which the mutton was boiled.

  3. Add the chopped onion, herbs, and celery to the liquor and boil down to three pints.

  4. Strain the mixture, season, and bring it to a boil again.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped meat and ½ cup of dry bread crumbs, then cover and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter rolled in flour and a little minced parsley, then stew for 5 minutes before serving.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover roast meat
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the porridge.
Dry bread crumbs
Thicken the liquid as they soak up moisture, giving the porridge its body.
Butter and flour
Rolled together and stirred in, the flour thickens the liquid while the butter adds richness.
Onion
Releases savory, aromatic flavor into the boiled liquor.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Flour dropped in unevenly forms lumps, so rolling the butter in flour first and stirring it in helps it disperse and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, bread, butter, flour, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, bread, butter, flour, parsley, pepper. 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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