Skip to main content
Bread

Cracked Wheat

Cracked wheat is cooked from soaked wheat, salt, and water, optionally with milk, to produce a moist, gently cooked grain.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cracked Wheat

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Soak the wheat in cold water overnight in a cool place.

Cook

  1. In the morning, place the soaked wheat and its water in a pot.

  2. Cover and cook gently for 1 to 1.5 hours, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

  3. If needed, replenish water with boiling water carefully.

  4. The final texture should be a moist mass.

  5. For best results, use a double boiler to prevent scorching.

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).

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 as it absorbs water and cooks, forming the body of the dish.
Cold water
Hydrates the grain during soaking and cooking, making it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Cook gently and stir frequently. Starch and sugars in the wheat can scorch on the hot base of the pot. Gentle heat, frequent stirring, or a double boiler spreads heat evenly and keeps the grain from burning while it softens.

“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.

More cracked wheat recipes

Porridge 45Pudding 14Griddles 3Oatmeal and Porridge 3 See all 14 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes