Name: Oatmeal Drink
Ingredients: 1 pound of oatmeal; ½ cup of white sugar; 1 lemon; 1 gallon of hot water

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Drink

Ingredients

1 pound of oatmeal
½ cup of white sugar
1 lemon
1 gallon of hot water

Directions

Combine oatmeal, sugar, and lemon juice with a little water in a porcelain kettle; mix well.
Add the gallon of hot water and stir until combined.
Set the mixture on ice until cold and serve.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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: Provides the body and starchy, cloudy texture of the drink.
White sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tart lemon and the flat oat flavor.
Lemon: Adds acidity and bright aroma that lift the flavor.

“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.