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Breakfast

Wheatena for Breakfast

A hot or cold porridge made from Wheatena and water, served with cream, sugar, and optionally fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wheatena for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Slowly stir 1 measure of Wheatena into 6 measures of slightly salted, boiling water.

  2. Boil for 1 minute.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar.

Set and fry cold porridge

  1. For cold serving, use 7 measures of water and pour into moistened molds.

  2. Turn out when cold.

  3. Cut into slices and fry in butter if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheatena
Whole-grain cereal that thickens the water into a porridge as its starch gelatinizes.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, smooth mouthfeel to the hot porridge.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild, toasty flavor of the cereal.
Butter
Browns in the pan when frying the cold slices, adding flavor and a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Stirring the Wheatena into boiling water. Adding the cereal slowly into boiling water, while stirring, keeps the grains from clumping. Clumps stay dry inside and make the porridge uneven in texture.

“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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