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Currant Gruel

A simple gruel made with water, currants, nutmeg, sugar, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,323 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Strain the water and return it to the pot.

Simmer and flavor

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of currants and boil until plump.

  2. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, sugar to taste, and 1/3 cup of sweet wine.

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. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Nutmeg + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Swell as they simmer and release fruit flavor and sweetness into the liquid.
Sweet wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavor to the warm liquid.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, spiced aroma.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, sugar, 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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