Name: Breakfast and Tea Dishes
Ingredients: cracked grains (hominy, grits, hulled wheat, barley, or oatmeal); milk or cream; sugar; butter; syrup

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 ↓

Breakfast and Tea Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cracked grains overnight or for about 10 hours.
In the morning, cook the soaked grains in a double boiler until tender.
Serve with milk or cream, and add sugar, butter, or syrup to taste.

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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).