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Onion, Apple and Wheat Dish

A baked wheat and apple stew with onions, herbs, curry, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,100 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Onion, Apple and Wheat Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the wheat and soak it for a few hours or overnight.

  2. Cook the soaked wheat slowly in enough water to cover for 3 hours.

  3. Peel and finely chop the onions, then fry them in olive oil or nut butter for 15 minutes.

  4. Simmer the mixed herbs and bay leaves in ½ cup of water for 10 minutes, then discard the leaves.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the herb liquid, fried onions, curry powder, coarse sea salt, grated apples, and milk to the cooked wheat.

  2. Mix thoroughly and pour into a casserole dish.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown 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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Olive + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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 stew and absorbs liquid as it cooks slowly.
Onions
Frying softens them and builds sweetness and savory depth.
Apples
Grated apples add sweetness and moisture that break down during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the cooked wheat and apple mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, olive, apple, milk):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, olive, apple, milk. 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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