Skip to main content

Morgan's Breakfast Polenta

"This was my first attempt at polenta. I like it, but it is my mother Sandie who truly loves it. We always eat it with homemade blackberry jam on the weekends. You can substitute your favorite jam. Top with sweetened sour cream or creme fraiche."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and blackberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 314 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-undecalactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

6 servings
Prep15 min
Cook40 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Bring the milk, water and 1/2 teaspoon salt to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.

  2. Slowly whisk in the dry polenta so it does not clump, then reduce the heat to low.

  3. Simmer for about 25 to 30 minutes, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until the polenta is thick and creamy and no longer gritty.

  4. Stir in the 2 tablespoons white sugar until dissolved, then remove the pan from the heat.

  5. Spoon the hot polenta into bowls.

  6. Top each bowl with a spoonful of blackberry jam.

  7. If using, dollop sour cream on top and sprinkle with the optional 1 tablespoon white sugar before serving.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + blackberrytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together29,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together77,855 recipes

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

  5. Cream + blackberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Milk and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 77,855 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Strawberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Raspberryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).