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Dessert

Whole- Wheat Gems

Whole wheat gems are baked pastries made with egg yolk, nut milk, whole-wheat flour, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Whole- Wheat Gems

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.

Make the batter

  1. Combine egg yolk and nut milk in a large bowl.

  2. Beat until foamy.

  3. Gradually add whole-wheat flour, beating continuously until all flour is incorporated.

  4. Continue beating for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into heated gem irons.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Whole-wheat flour
Forms the structure of the gems as its starch and proteins set during baking.
Egg white
Beaten stiff and folded in, it traps air that helps the gems rise and become light.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter into a smooth, cohesive mixture.
Nut milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles trapped in the whipped egg white intact. Overmixing deflates them, which leads to denser, flatter gems.

“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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