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Breakfast

Cracked Wheat

A simple porridge made by cooking crushed white wheat in boiling water, seasoned with salt and optional spices and sweeteners.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cracked Wheat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the porridge

  1. Stir the crushed white wheat into a quart of boiling water.

  2. Place the tin pot in a pan of boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. When the kernels have swelled and burst, it is done.

  5. For a savory breakfast dish, add cinnamon, cloves, raisins, and sugar while boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve plain with meat and gravy, or in saucers with cinnamon, sugar, and butter or cream.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Crushed white wheat
Provides the main body; its starch swells and thickens the porridge as the kernels burst.
Boiling water
Hydrates the wheat so the kernels swell and soften during gentle cooking.
Raisins or currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture when included.

The step that matters

Judge doneness by the kernels, not the clock. Wheat kernels must swell and burst fully to release their starch and set a smooth porridge. Stopping early leaves firm, unthickened grains, so check the texture rather than relying only on the 20-minute timing.

“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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