Skip to main content
Breakfast

Breakfast Cereals

A simple homemade breakfast cereal made by boiling water with various grains and cereals.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and oats work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Cereals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring water and salt to a boil in a pot.

Cook the whole or cracked grains

  1. Add whole or cracked grains to the boiling water.

  2. Stir frequently for 10 minutes.

  3. Cover and cook in a double boiler for 3 to 12 hours.

Cook the flaked cereals

  1. Add flaked cereals to the boiling water.

  2. Stir until thickened.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir often during simmering.

Cook the granular cereals

  1. Add granular cereals to the boiling water.

  2. Stir quickly until thickened, then cover and cook.

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. Rice + oatstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal, rice, or cracked wheat
Starch that softens and thickens slowly during long, gentle cooking.
Rolled oats or flaked cereal
Starch and fibre that thicken the cereal and give it a soft, hearty body.
Cornmeal or farina
Fine starch that thickens quickly and gives the cereal a smooth or grainy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the granular cereal to the boiling water. Granular cereals can clump when dropped into hot liquid because the outer starch gels before the inside hydrates. Stirring quickly as you add them spreads the particles apart so the cereal thickens evenly and stays smooth.

“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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes