Skip to main content
Dessert

Splendid Oat Cake

A simple oat and flour cake baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Splendid Oat Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix 3 cups of oatmeal with 1 cup of flour.

  2. Add enough butter to prevent stickiness.

  3. Pour in cold water gradually and mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a floured surface and sprinkle flour as needed while rolling.

  2. Roll the dough thinly and cut it into squares or triangular pieces.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

  4. Serve fresh for the best taste.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dough and gives the cake its hearty, nutty texture.
All-purpose flour
Binds with the oats and water so the dough holds together when rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and keeps it from sticking to the work surface.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour and oats so they bind into a rollable dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. Thin, even rolling lets the pieces bake through and crisp evenly. Thick spots stay soft and can burn at the edges. Enough flour on the surface prevents sticking without making the dough dry.

“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