Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Oat Meal Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the batter
In a large bowl, combine oat meal and flour.
In a separate bowl, mix shortening and sugar until creamy. Dissolve baking soda in warm water and add to the shortening mixture.
Combine all ingredients and mix until well blended.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
- Oat meal
- Adds texture and a hearty, chewy body to the cakes.
- Shortening
- Adds fat that creams with sugar to tenderize the cakes and carry flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cakes and helps create golden browning in the oven.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
The step that matters
Dissolve baking soda in warm water before adding it. Dissolving baking soda evenly distributes it through the batter so it reacts uniformly, giving consistent rise and avoiding bitter pockets of unreacted soda.
“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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