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Dessert

Oat Meal Deop Cakes

Drop cakes made from brown sugar, butter, egg, rolled oats, flour, sour cream and pecan nuts, baked on sheets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oat Meal Deop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Add the egg, salt, sour cream, and baking soda; mix well.

  3. Stir in the rolled oats, flour, and baking powder until combined.

  4. Fold in the pecan nuts.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Oats + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay chewy.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the dough spread.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and a toasty, nutty flavor to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and turn lighter.

The step that matters

Baking time and oven heat. Cookies go from golden to over-browned quickly. Baking only until golden brown keeps them chewy, while over-baking makes them dry and hard.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, cream, oats, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Mixed nutsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, cream, oats, flour. 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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