Skip to main content
Dessert

Oat Meal Crackers

A simple baked cracker made from oat meal, brown sugar, butter, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oat Meal Crackers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix brown sugar, oat meal, and butter.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in part of the hot water and add to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is very stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and bake.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and color to the crackers.
Oat meal
Gives a hearty, slightly nutty texture and bulk to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a crisp, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Helps the crackers rise slightly and brown during baking.
Flour
Provides structure so the very stiff dough can be rolled and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough dries out and crisps as it bakes, while thick dough stays soft and chewy in the center. Even thickness also helps the crackers bake at the same rate.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes