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Wheat Gruel

A simple wheat gruel made with cream of wheat or farina, boiling water, milk sugar, butter or hot cream, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Wheat Gruel

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wheat Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine 2 to 3 tablespoons of cream of wheat or farina with 1 pint of boiling water.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of milk sugar.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in 1 teaspoon of butter or 2 to 3 ounces of hot cream.

  5. Optionally, add dried soaked raisins or currants.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream of wheat or farina
Thickens the water into a smooth, porridge-like gruel as the starch swells during boiling.
Butter or hot cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished gruel.
Milk sugar
Adds sweetness to the gruel.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, butter. 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.

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