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Breakfast

Oatmeal Day Diet

A breakfast of oatmeal cooked with water, butter, egg whites, and optional spirits, served with black coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Whisky and coffee work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Oatmeal Day Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oatmeal

  1. Cook the oatmeal thoroughly in water for two hours.

  2. When the oatmeal is nearly done, stir in the butter and egg whites until well combined.

  3. Season with salt and pepper as desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with black coffee.

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. Whisky + coffeetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

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

  2. Butter + whiskytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + coffeetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a thick, porridge-like body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cooked oatmeal a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Egg whites
Set with gentle heat to bind and thicken the oatmeal, adding structure and body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites. Egg whites set when heated, so they should be stirred in while the oatmeal is nearly done and still hot but not boiling vigorously. Stirring them in thoroughly keeps them from clumping or scrambling unevenly.

“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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