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Dessert

Healthful Dessert

A baked pudding made from milk, cracked wheat, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat 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 ↓

Healthful Dessert

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, stir together the milk, cracked wheat, and raisins until well mixed.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 2 hours, stirring every 10 minutes to prevent browning.

Cool and serve

  1. It should be thin when it comes out of the oven, as it will jelly when cold.

  2. Let it cool before serving with cream.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Provides the liquid that the cracked wheat absorbs and sets into a soft, custard-like body as it cools.
Cracked wheat
Absorbs the milk as it bakes, thickening the mixture and giving it a grainy texture.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring during baking. Milk sugars and proteins scorch and brown on the hot base of a dish during a long bake. Stirring every 10 minutes moves the hotter liquid from the bottom and keeps the cracked wheat from settling and sticking.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat. 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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