Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Scotch Porridge
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the oatmeal with the same quantity of water or milk.
Add ½ pint of cold water or milk and stir well.
Boil the mixture while stirring for two minutes or until it thickens.
Add salt or sugar to taste.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Scotch oatmeal
- Forms the body of the porridge, thickening as its starch swells in boiling liquid.
- Water or milk
- Hydrates the oats so they swell and soften, with milk adding richer flavour and creaminess.
The step that matters
Boil while stirring until it thickens. Stirring keeps the oats from settling and scorching on the base of the pan, and the starch needs to come up to a boil to thicken the porridge evenly.
“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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