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A Groat Pudding

A simple pudding made from groats, water, onion, sage, marjoram, butter, pepper, and salt, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Groat Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick and wash the groats.

  2. Combine groats, water, chopped onion, sage, marjoram, butter, pepper, and salt in a dish.

  3. Cook until the mixture is thick and the groats are tender.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Groats
Form the body of the pudding; their starch thickens and sets as they cook and soften.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender mouthfeel.
Dried sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic flavor that suits the savory pudding.
Dried sweet marjoram
Adds a mild, sweet herbal aroma that complements the onion and sage.

The step that matters

Cook until thick and the groats are tender. Groats need enough time in the liquid for their starch to thicken the mixture and for the grains to soften. Stopping early leaves the grains chewy and the pudding loose.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, marjoram, butter, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, marjoram, butter, pepper. 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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