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Breakfast

Cracked Wheat

A porridge made from soaked cracked wheat, boiled, seasoned with salt, and served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cracked Wheat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cracked wheat in 2 cups of cold water overnight.

Cook

  1. In the morning, boil the soaked wheat in a double boiler for 30 minutes.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked wheat
Its starch swells and softens during cooking, thickening the water into a porridge.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the mild, grainy porridge.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the porridge's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Soak the cracked wheat overnight. Soaking hydrates the grains before cooking, so they soften evenly and cook into a tender porridge instead of staying chewy.

“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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