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Plum Pottage

A stew made with veal and beef broth, crumbled French rolls, raisins, currants, spices, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Make the pottage

  1. In a large pot, combine veal broth and beef broth.

  2. Add crumbled French rolls and mix well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, lemon juice, cinnamon, mace, cloves, Port, Claret, and grated lemon peel.

  4. Season with lump sugar to taste.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Add a little cochineal to achieve a nice color.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen, ensuring it has a consistency similar to 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

French rolls
Crumbled bread that soaks up liquid and thickens the pottage into a soft body.
Raisins
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and body.
Currants
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and a fruity aroma to the broth.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture for 1 hour. Simmering lets the crumbled bread swell and break down while the fruit softens and the flavours blend. Too little time leaves the bread lumpy and the wine tasting raw, while overcooking can thicken the pottage too far past the thin gruel-like consistency the record describes.

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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