Name: Shredded Wheat Gruel
Ingredients: 2 shredded wheat biscuits; 1 quart boiling water; 2 teaspoons salt; 2 cups milk

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

2 shredded wheat biscuits
1 quart boiling water
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups milk

Directions

Cook the shredded wheat biscuits, salt, and boiling water together for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the milk and strain the mixture.

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 + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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: Break down into starch and body, thickening the liquid into a gruel.
Milk: Adds richness and creaminess, softening the gruel's flavour and texture.

“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.