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Sanwa Millet

A simple millet porridge cooked with water, optionally sweetened with sugar and served with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Millet and milk work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sanwa Millet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Rinse the Sanwa millet under cold water.

  2. In a pot, combine the millet and water.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes until water is absorbed.

Serve

  1. Serve warm, adding sugar and milk 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. Millet + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Millet + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Millet
Forms the body of the porridge, softening as it absorbs water and simmers into a thick texture.
Water
Hydrates the millet grains so they swell and cook through during simmering.

Swap the millet

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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