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Wheat Steamed

Steamed wheat served with cream or oil, optionally topped with fig sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 70 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Wheat Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak desired amount of wheat overnight in water. If it's summer, refrigerate.

  2. The next morning, drain the wheat and place it in a sieve over a kettle of boiling water.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the wheat for fifteen minutes until ready to serve.

  2. Serve with cream or oil, and optionally with fig sauce.

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. Wheat + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Cream + figtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wheat + saucetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat
Forms the bulk of the dish; steaming softens the soaked grains until tender.
Cream or oil
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked grains.

Swap the fig

The recipe marks fig as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, cream, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, cream, sauce. 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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