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Plum Pottage

A fruit stew of prunes, raisins, currants, and French rolls simmered in veal and beef broth with spices and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pottage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine veal broth and beef broth in a pot.

  2. Add stoned prunes and crumbled French rolls, then rub through a fine cloth.

  3. Mix in stoned raisins, currants, lemon juice, cinnamon, mace, cloves, red port, claret, and grated lemon peel.

  4. Sweeten with lump sugar to taste.

  5. Simmer the mixture for one hour.

  6. Add a little cochineal for color and serve in a tureen.

  7. Ensure the consistency is like water gruel.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stoned prunes
Break down into the body and natural sweetness of the pottage.
French rolls
Thicken the broth and give the pottage body as they soak and break down.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture as they plump during simmering.
Red port
Adds depth, aroma and fruity acidity to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer for one hour. Simmering is what softens the prunes and rolls and lets them thicken the liquid. Too short a simmer leaves the texture grainy and the flavors separate, while the consistency must end like water gruel, thin and smooth.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, raisin, lemon, cinnamon, mace, clove):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, raisin, lemon, cinnamon, mace, clove. 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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