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Shredded Wheat As a Baby Food

A simple baby food made by boiling shredded wheat biscuit in water, then adding milk, salt, and sugar, and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Shredded Wheat As a Baby Food

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Add the Shredded Wheat Biscuit and cook slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add the milk, salt, and sugar.

Strain and store

  1. Strain through a fine cheesecloth, pressing to extract all liquid.

  2. Cool and store the liquid covered in a cold place until needed.

Serve

  1. When ready to use, heat the required amount to 98°F and serve using a feeding bottle.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Milk + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Shredded wheat biscuit
Breaks down during slow cooking to thicken the water into a smooth, starchy liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the flavor for a baby.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that makes the gruel more appealing.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 15 minutes. Gentle simmering lets the starch in the biscuit swell and break down fully. Boiling hard or stopping early leaves lumps and a thin, grainy texture that strains poorly.

“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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