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Plum-Porridge

A savory porridge made with beef, veal, bread, raisins, prunes, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Plum-Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the shin of beef in water for five hours.

  2. Skim the surface carefully and strain off the liquid.

  3. Add a piece of veal to the strained liquid.

Thicken and flavour

  1. Soften the crumb of the penny loaf in the soup and beat it smoothly.

  2. Thicken the soup with the bread mixture.

  3. Add the raisins, prunes, currants, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Cook until the fruit is soft.

  5. Adjust thickness with more bread if desired.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Slow boiling in water yields the rich meat broth that forms the base of the porridge.
Penny loaf crumb
Softened bread thickens the soup, giving it body.
Raisins
Cooked until soft, they add sweetness and a chewy texture to the soup.
Prunes
Cooked until soft, they add sweetness and a dense, sticky texture.
Currants
Cooked until soft, they add small pockets of sweetness and tartness.

The step that matters

Skim the surface carefully. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise during long boiling; leaving them in makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, raisin, pepper, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, raisin, pepper, mace, nutmeg. 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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