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Spoon-meat

A wheat porridge made with boiled wheat, milk, flour, spices, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Spoon-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wheat

  1. Boil water until soft.

  2. Place the wheat in a clean pot and let it cool to form a jelly.

Make the porridge

  1. Combine the wheat with milk in a pan until it reaches a rice milk consistency.

  2. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon to prevent burning.

  3. When near boiling, mix in a small amount of flour blended with a little milk.

  4. Add pimento, sugar, and salt to taste.

  5. Boil until ready to serve.

  6. Thicken with beaten egg yolks instead of flour for a richer flavor.

  7. Add currants or raisins 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. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Creed or creeled wheat
Forms the main body of the porridge as it softens and thickens in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the porridge when stirred in near boiling with a little milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that gives the porridge its creamy, smooth consistency.
Beaten egg yolks (in the method)
Optional thickener that adds richness and body in place of flour.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while the porridge cooks. Starches and milk solids settle on the bottom of the pot and scorch easily, so constant stirring keeps heat even and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, milk, flour, cinnamon, sugar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, flour, cinnamon, sugar, 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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