Name: Cereal with Fruit
Ingredients: ¾ cup wheat germ; ¾ cup cold water; 2 cups boiling water; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ pound dates, stoned and cut into pieces; cream for serving

Why it works: Wheat and dates work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Cereal with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cereal

Mix the wheat germ, salt, and cold water in a bowl.
Add the mixture to the boiling water.
Boil for 5 minutes.

Steam and serve

Steam in a double boiler for 30 minutes.
Stir in the dates and serve 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.

Wheat + datestop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together681 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Dates + creamtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together276 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat germ: Forms the body of the cereal, giving it a thick, grainy texture as it cooks.
Dates: Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the finished cereal.