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Cracked Wheat Pudding

A baked pudding made from cracked wheat, dried fruit, and a custard of milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cracked Wheat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the wheat

  1. Cook cracked wheat until done.

  2. Stir in raisins, dates, or any dried fruit a few minutes before finishing cooking.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare custard using milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract.

  2. Stir the custard thoroughly into the cooked wheat.

Bake

  1. Bake until the custard is set, about 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Dates + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked wheat
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a chewy, grainy body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the custard structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and softness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it curdle and turn grainy and rubbery.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, dates, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, dates, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla. 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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