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Cracked Wheat Mush

A porridge made by boiling cracked wheat with salt, served with syrup, butter, cream, or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and syrup work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cracked Wheat Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Moisten the cracked wheat with cold water.

  2. Add salt and place the mixture in a muslin bag, leaving space for the wheat to swell.

Cook

  1. Put the bag in a small colander and place it in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with syrup and butter or cream and sugar.

  2. For leftovers, slice and fry when cold.

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 + syruptop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked wheat
Forms the body of the porridge as its starch swells and softens during long simmering.
Salt
Seasons the porridge and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Leaving space in the muslin bag. Cracked wheat swells considerably as it absorbs water. If packed tightly in the bag, it can be squeezed and cook unevenly, so room to expand lets each grain hydrate and soften evenly.

“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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