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Plum Broth

A sweet broth made from raisins, water, flour, nutmeg, and sugar, optionally flavored with butter, wine, or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the raisins in plenty of water for 1 hour.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix flour with water to create a thickening.

  3. Grate in nutmeg and sweeten with sugar to taste.

Finish

  1. Add a small piece of butter, wine, or brandy if desired.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Boiling softens them and releases their sweetness and fruity flavor into the water.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot liquid, giving the broth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with water. Stirring flour into water until smooth before it meets the hot liquid keeps lumps from forming, because starch clumps when it hits heat unevenly. A smooth slurry thickens the broth evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, butter, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, butter, wine. 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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