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Plum-porridge, or Earle Y-gruel

A barley porridge cooked with raisins, currants, mace, and sweetened, finished with white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Plum-porridge, or Earle Y-gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. In a large pot, combine the water and barley.

  2. Add the cleaned raisins and picked currants.

  3. Boil until the water is reduced by more than half.

Finish

  1. Add the blades of mace and sweeten to your taste.

  2. Stir in the white wine 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Currant + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Releases starch as it simmers, thickening the liquid into a porridge with body.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft, moist chew as they plump in the liquid.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chew that soften during simmering.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright aroma that balances the sweet fruit.
Mace
Contributes a warm, spiced aroma that infuses into the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until the water is reduced by more than half. As liquid evaporates, the barley's starch thickens the porridge and the fruit's sugars concentrate. Reducing too far can scorch the bottom of the pot and make the porridge too thick, so watch it closely and stir.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, raisin, currant, white wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, raisin, currant, white wine. 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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