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Dessert

Oatmeal Pudding

A baked pudding made with oatmeal, milk, bread crumbs, suet, eggs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oatmeal base

  1. Mix the oatmeal with 1/4 pint of milk.

  2. Add the boiling milk and sweeten to taste.

  3. Stir over heat for 10 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. Incorporate the bread-crumbs until the mixture is stiff.

  2. Add the shredded suet and beaten eggs.

  3. Mix in grated nutmeg.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 1 hour.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Scotch oatmeal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as it absorbs liquid and swells.
Milk
Hydrates the oats and creates a soft, creamy moisture base.
Bread-crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the mixture stiffen into a firmer texture.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender, moist crumb when baked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give structure.

The step that matters

Stirring over heat before adding the crumbs. Cooking the oat and milk mixture for 10 minutes lets the starch gelatinise and thicken. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps, so the later bread-crumbs and eggs blend into an even, stiff base.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread, egg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread, egg, butter. 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.

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