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Oriental Wheat Dish

A baked wheat dish seasoned with oil and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Oriental Wheat Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the wheat

  1. Pick the wheat clean and wash it twice.

  2. Expose the wheat to the sun for several hours.

  3. Soak the wheat for six hours or less.

Cook and bake

  1. Boil the soaked wheat in the soaking water, adding more water as needed, for four hours until perfectly soft.

  2. Transfer the wheat to an earthenware dish. Pour a generous amount of oil over it and salt to taste.

  3. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for fifteen minutes, leaving the dish uncovered.

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long soaking and boiling.
Oil
Adds richness and moisture to the wheat and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boiling the soaked wheat until perfectly soft. Wheat grains have a tough outer layer and dense starch. Long, steady simmering in water fully hydrates the starch and softens the bran, so the grains become tender rather than chewy. Stopping early leaves the texture firm.

“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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