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Cream of Wheat

A hot cereal made from cream wheat, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and wheat work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 681 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cream of Wheat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make sure the water is actually boiling in a saucepan.

Cook

  1. Add salt, then add cream wheat gradually.

  2. Stir constantly until thick.

  3. Cook Y-Z to y$ hour over hot water.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

51Calories
0 gProtein
5 gFat
0 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 4 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Wheatnot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By New Orleans Federation of Clubs. 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. See the original page.

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. Cream + wheattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream wheat
Its starch swells and thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the cereal its body.
Boiling water
Hydrates the wheat so its starch can gelatinize and thicken during cooking.

The step that matters

Add the cream wheat gradually while stirring constantly. Wheat starch granules clump when dumped into hot liquid all at once. Adding it slowly while stirring separates the granules so they hydrate evenly, keeping the cereal smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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