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Dessert

Frumenty

Frumenty is a sweet wheat dish cooked in milk or cream with cinnamon, sugar and currants, optionally finished with egg yolks and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Frumenty

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the wheat

  1. Boil the wheat in milk until tender, about 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Add the quart of milk or cream, cinnamon, sugar, and currants to the boiled wheat.

  3. Boil the mixture for an additional 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and brandy if using.

  2. Serve in a junket bowl or cups.

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 + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Wheat
Softens and swells over long simmering to give the porridge its body and bite.
Milk or cream
Provides the liquid that cooks the wheat and gives a rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the milk and cinnamon.
Currants
Plump up in the hot liquid, adding sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit.
Egg yolks
Enrich the porridge and help thicken it gently when stirred in.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the milk as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot liquid. Removing the pan from the heat first and stirring steadily lets the yolks thicken the porridge gently and evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, cinnamon, sugar, egg, brandy. 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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