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Crystal Wheat Roast

A roasted wheat dish with nut butter, tomatoes, and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crystal Wheat Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Cook the wheat

  1. Steam the crystal wheat in boiling water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the nut butter, moisten with water to make it creamy, and add salt.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes or steam for 20 minutes.

Finish the roast

  1. Cool and turn out of the pan, basting with nut butter, then brown in the oven.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine strained tomatoes, nut butter, lemon juice, and salt.

Make the filling

  1. Mix hard-boiled yolks with bread crumbs, nut meal, salt, onion, raw egg yolk, and enough nut cream to make it mushy.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Wheat + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Crystal wheat
Forms the bulk and firm, sliceable body of the roast.
Nut butter
Adds moisture, richness and fat, and helps the roast brown when basted.
Strained tomatoes
Provide acidity and a smooth, pourable body to the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, moist texture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body and structure.
Raw egg yolk
Sets when heated, binding the filling together.

The step that matters

Mixing the filling to a mushy consistency. The raw egg yolk sets with heat and binds the mixture, so the nut cream must be added gradually. Too much liquid keeps the filling loose and it will not hold together.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, butter, tomato, sauce, egg, bread, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, butter, tomato, sauce, egg, bread, cream. 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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