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Frumenty , or Furmity, As It is Sometimes Called

A boiled wheat dish with milk, currants, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, As It is Sometimes Called

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wheat base

  1. Combine the wheat, milk, and currants or raisins in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Finish with eggs

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

  2. Add the egg mixture to the boiling wheat and stir well.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a creamy, custard-like texture when heated and stirred in.
Ready-boiled wheat
Provides the body and chewy texture that the dish is built around.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, with the yolks, gives richness and softness.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiling wheat. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if they meet very hot liquid without being stirred well, they can scramble into small lumps. Stirring the mixture thoroughly as it goes in keeps the yolks evenly dispersed so the dish stays smooth.

Swap the currant

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

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

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