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Pasquotank Wheat Frumenty

A wheat porridge made with boiled wheat, milk, eggs, sugar, flour, butter, and topped with butter and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Pasquotank Wheat Frumenty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wheat

  1. The day before preparation, pick, wash, and dry 1 quart of wheat.

  2. At 4:00 AM, place the wheat in a clean pot with 1 gallon of water.

  3. Boil steadily until 10:00 AM, stirring occasionally and adding more water if needed.

Make the custard

  1. Beat together 12 eggs, 1 pound of sugar, 1 tablespoon of flour, and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. In a warm porcelain kettle, combine 3 quarts of the boiled wheat with 3 quarts of milk.

  3. Stir in the egg mixture and bring to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve in large bowls, topping with bits of butter and a sprinkle of finely pulverized allspice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Wheat
Its starch swells and softens during long boiling, giving the frumenty its thick, porridge-like body.
Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the milk mixture and giving it a rich, creamy structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, forming the liquid base that the wheat and eggs thicken into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the custard and gives the finished bowls a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg mixture and bring to a boil. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if they overheat or sit still in hot liquid. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, egg, sugar, flour, butter, milk. 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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