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A Method of Preparing Germ of Wheat Previous to Its Combination with Flour or Wheaten Meal for the Manufacture of Bread, Biscuits, and Pastry

A method for preparing wheat germ before mixing it with flour or wheaten meal for bread, biscuits, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 96 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Method of Preparing Germ of Wheat Previous to Its Combination with Flour or Wheaten Meal for the Manufacture of Bread, Biscuits, and Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the germ

  1. Heat the germ of wheat to 250°F (120°C) until crisp.

  2. Treat the crisp germ with lime water and extract of malt.

  3. Dry the germ at a temperature not exceeding 140°F (60°C).

Make the flour

  1. Blend one-fifth of the treated germ with four-fifths of flour or wheaten meal.

  2. For germ white flour, make a liquid extract of the germ and mix with a fifth less malt extract.

  3. Form a tough dough with the extract and flour, roll out into thin sheets, dry, and grind.

  4. Blend the resulting powder with flour in a ratio of 25 pounds of powder to 255 pounds of flour.

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 + limetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wheat + malttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

  5. Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Germ of wheat
Supplies oil and a nutty flavour that enriches the finished flour.
Flour or wheaten meal
Provides the starch and gluten that give structure to the dough.
Extract of malt
Adds sugars that contribute sweetness and aid browning.

The step that matters

Dry the germ at no more than 140°F (60°C). Wheat germ contains natural oils that go rancid and lose flavour when overheated, so keeping the drying temperature low protects both taste and quality.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, malt, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, malt, flour. 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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