Why it works: Sauce and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Whole-meal Porridge
Ingredients
Directions
Mix two tablespoonfuls of meal with one teacupful of cold water until smooth.
Put a pint of water into a sauce-pan.
When the water boils, stir in the mixed meal and boil for ten minutes, stirring all the time.
Place the sauce-pan on the hob and cook the porridge slowly for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
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.
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Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,474 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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
- Wholemeal meal
- Forms the thickened body of the porridge as its starch swells in boiling water.
The step that matters
Stirring while the meal boils. Stirring keeps the meal dispersed so it does not clump or stick to the pan. Starch thickens as it swells in hot water, so lumps form quickly if the mixture is left still.
“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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