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Plum Porridge

A warm porridge made with milk, flour, raisins, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of flour with some cold milk to form a paste.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add a handful of raisins and a little grated nutmeg.

  5. Boil for 20 minutes, then season with salt.

Serve

  1. Strain the mixture 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly set porridge as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, as it simmers, contributes body and sweetness.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the porridge.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly or is added dry. Mixing it smooth with cold milk first lets the starch disperse and thicken the porridge evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, raisin):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, raisin. 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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