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Danish Grits

A sweet currant juice grits thickened with rice meal, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Danish Grits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the grits

  1. In a pot, combine the juice of currants and sugar to taste with salt.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in enough rice meal to thicken the mixture moderately.

  4. Boil for an additional 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Currant + ricetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Rice meal
Thickens the currant juice into a moderately firm, spoonable mixture as it cooks.
Juice of currants
Provides the main liquid and tart fruit flavor that the dish is built on.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast to the tart, cold grits.

The step that matters

Stirring in the rice meal. Rice meal thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid. Adding too much at once can make the mixture stiff and lumpy, so add it gradually while stirring until it reaches the desired thickness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rice, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rice, cream. 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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