Skip to main content
Dessert

Oatmeal Betty

A baked oatmeal dessert with apples, raisins, corn syrup, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Oatmeal Betty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix and bake

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the cooked oatmeal, chopped apples, raisins (or dates), corn syrup, and cinnamon. Mix well and transfer to a baking dish.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  5. Syrup + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a soft, hearty body.
Apples
Add moisture and tender fruit texture as they soften during baking.
Corn syrup
Adds sweetness and a moist, sticky texture to the baked mixture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the dish.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, corn, syrup, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, corn, syrup, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes