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Frumenty, or Furmity

A boiled wheat dish with milk, currants or raisins, egg yolks, and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

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

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

  5. 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

Wheat
Forms the thick, porridge-like body of the dish.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the wheat as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture gently as they heat, giving it a richer, creamier texture.
Currants or raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the wheat gently while adding the yolk mixture, and keeping the heat moderate, lets the yolks thicken the dish 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.

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