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Dessert

Cracked Wheat Pudding

A custard pudding made with cracked wheat, raisins, eggs, milk, flour, butter, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the cracked wheat according to package instructions for two meals.

  2. Stir in the raisins or dates a few minutes before finishing.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a custard by beating the eggs separately until light the next day.

  2. Mix the yolks with the milk, flour, butter, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake

  1. Combine the custard with the cooked wheat and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard and whites, beaten and folded in, lighten the pudding and help it set.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the custard so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
Cracked wheat
Forms the bulk and chewy body of the pudding.
Raisins or dates
Add sweetness and moisture in tender pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only while whole; overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense pudding. Fold gently and last, so the batter stays light as it bakes and sets.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, raisin, egg, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, raisin, egg, milk, flour, 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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