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Oatmeal and Macaroni

A dish of oatmeal and macaroni cooked with water, milk, pepper, salt, butter, and served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oatmeal and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oatmeal

  1. Combine 1 cup oatmeal and 1 quart boiling water in a double boiler; boil for 4 hours without stirring.

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into small pieces.

  2. Cook the broken macaroni in cold water until soft.

  3. Drain excess water from the macaroni.

  4. Add milk, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the macaroni.

  5. Heat the mixture until the milk is hot.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over buttered slices of toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Thickens the boiling water into a soft, starchy base for the dish.
Macaroni
Provides bulk and a soft, tender texture once cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess when heated through with the macaroni.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread, softening it and adding flavor.
Slices of bread
Serves as a toasted base that holds the hot mixture.

“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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