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Plum Pottage

A stew of French rolls, raisins, currants, and spices simmered in veal and beef broth with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 large pot, combine veal broth and beef broth.

  2. Add the crumbed French rolls and mix well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, lemon juice, cinnamon, mace, cloves, Port, Claret, grated lemon peel, and lump sugar.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for one hour.

  5. Add a small amount of 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

French rolls
Crumbed bread soaks up the broth and thickens the pottage into a gruel-like body.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft body as they plump and soften during simmering.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and small chewy bits of fruit throughout the pottage.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma, with alcohol that carries the spices.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon juice and wine.

The step that matters

Simmering for one hour. Long simmering softens the crumbed rolls and dried fruit and lets the spices and wine blend. Too little time leaves the texture pasty and the flavors sharp.

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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