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Shredded Wheat Gruel

A simple gruel made from shredded wheat biscuits, water, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk 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 ↓

Shredded Wheat Gruel

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the shredded wheat biscuits, salt, and boiling water.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the milk and strain the mixture before serving.

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 + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Shredded wheat biscuits
Provide the starch that thickens the liquid into a gruel.
Milk
Adds richness and a softer, creamier body to the finished gruel.

The step that matters

Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stirring keeps the shredded wheat from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pot, and the full simmer lets the starch swell and soften so the gruel thickens evenly.

“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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