Skip to main content
Main

Baby Food

A simple porridge made from wheat, water, milk, sugar, and optional almonds, suitable for infants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baby Food

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wheat

  1. Soak the wheat in ½ cup of water until absorbed.

  2. Boil or steam the soaked wheat in 1 quart of water until well done.

  3. Mash the wheat through a colander and return it to the heat with the remaining water.

Make the porridge

  1. Add ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and 1 pint of thoroughly sweetened milk.

  2. Stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar and let it slowly come to a simmer.

  3. Blend in the flour of 10 finely grated blanched almonds when adding the milk.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve and cheesecloth.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Wheat
Forms the thick body of the porridge as its starch swells and softens during cooking.
Milk
Adds liquid, richness and a smooth texture to the porridge.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished porridge.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, milk, sugar):

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Almond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipesWheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes