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Mush, Stirabout, Porridge, Hasty Pudding

A thickened porridge made from coarsely ground meal, boiled with water and served with optional sweeteners or fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Mush, Stirabout, Porridge, Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Boil water in a pot over a good fire and add a little salt.

  2. Sprinkle in a handful of meal while stirring with a large spoon until it reaches a thin paste consistency.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes for oatmeal, 10 minutes for wheat or rye, 15 minutes for barley, and 20 minutes for Indian corn.

  4. If too thick, thin with boiling water and stir in just enough meal to achieve a stiff consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish without a cover and enjoy with your choice of brown sugar, milk, golden syrup, stewed apple, or stewed prunes.

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

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

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarsely ground meal
Forms the thickened body of the porridge as its starch gelatinises with boiling water.
Water
Hydrates the meal so its starch swells and thickens into a porridge.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished porridge.

The step that matters

Adding the meal. Sprinkling meal in gradually while stirring prevents lumps, since dry starch clumps when it hits hot water. Adding it all at once makes a lumpy, unevenly thickened porridge.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, sugar, milk, syrup, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, sugar, milk, syrup, butter. 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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