Wheat is a cereal with 386 known flavor compounds. The most distinctive molecule is methyl acrylate. It pairs most strongly with rye, sharing 234 flavor compounds. Wheat appears in 6,247 recipes, most commonly in Indonesian cuisine.
Compounds ranked by rarity — the higher the score, the more distinctive to this ingredient.
Of the ~226 molecules that drive perceived food aroma (Dunkel et al. 2014), Wheat's inventory contains 71. Most of the other 315 compounds are below detection threshold.
+ 59 more — showing top 12 by class and threshold.
Generalist = appears in >25% of foods (Maillard / fermentation products). Individualist = appears in <5% of foods (carries signature notes). Threshold values are in clean water — the actual perception threshold in a food matrix can differ substantially.
How Wheat's 386 known compounds break down by aroma category. Percentages are of compounds with a known label.
125 of 386 are distinctive to wheat — they appear in under 10% of foods. The remainder are the background most foods share.
Ordered by measured impact in wheat — concentration against odour threshold where both are published, then by how distinctive the molecule is across the graph. Molecules measured here but not established as odorants sit below those that are.
Ranked by median concentration across published studies. Only 3 of Wheat's 386 compounds have a measured concentration in the literature — the rest are confirmed present but not yet quantified. Bars are log-scaled.
Ranked by how often cooks actually use them together, across 453,403 recipes — the familiar answer first. Each pairing still carries its molecular score and shared-compound count; only the ORDER differs. Counts cover every characterised molecule the two ingredients have in common, not only the aroma-active ones, so they can exceed an ingredient’s aroma-compound count. For the chemistry-first view — where the surprising pairings live — see the molecular network below, the side-by-side comparison, or the Pairing Tool.
Wheat and its 10 closest compound-sharing relatives. Spoke thickness = shared compounds; circle size = that ingredient's own compound count. Drag to rearrange, scroll to zoom, click to open.
Compare Wheat side-by-side
Drawn from PubMed + Europe PMC + food-science journals. Click any title to read the full abstract on the original source.
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Micronutrients are the key factors to evaluate the nutritional quality of wheat. However, measuring micronutrients is time-consuming and expensive. In this study, the potential of... Read abstract →
Traditional Huangjiu (a kind of traditional Chinese rice wine) produced around Winter Solstice has higher quality and a more harmonious aroma than those produced during other perio... Read abstract →
Abstract Alkylresorcinols (ARs) are important bioactive components in wheat bran which have been used as biomarkers for whole grain wheat consumption. In this study, the impact of... Read abstract →
The effects of wheat flour substitution by sweet potato powder on rheological parameters of wheat dough and physical parameters of cookies and crackers were analyzed. Wheat flour w... Read abstract →