Skip to main content
Main

Frumenty , or Furmity

A boiled wheat pudding with milk, currants, and egg yolks, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Frumenty , or Furmity

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the ready-boiled wheat, milk, and currants or raisins in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with salt, nutmeg, and 2-3 tablespoons of milk.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling wheat and stir for a few minutes.

  4. Sweeten to taste and serve.

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. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ready-boiled wheat
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a soft, porridge-like body.
Milk
Cooks the wheat and adds moisture and richness to the porridge.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture gently when stirred into the hot wheat and milk, adding richness.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruitiness throughout the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiling wheat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring steadily while adding them lets the yolks thicken the mixture smoothly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, egg, nutmeg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes