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Breakfast

Cracked Wheat

A simple porridge made by boiling cracked wheat with salt, served hot or chilled with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cracked Wheat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the porridge

  1. Stir cracked wheat and salt into boiling water.

  2. Boil in a double boiler for 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot.

Chill and serve cold

  1. Pour into a mold and chill.

  2. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked wheat
Provides the bulk of the porridge, thickening as its starch softens and absorbs the water during long cooking.

The step that matters

Long, gentle cooking in a double boiler. Cracked wheat needs sustained moist heat so its starch gelatinizes and the grains soften fully. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle, which lowers the risk of scorching and sticking over the two hours.

“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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