Name: Oatmeal Drink
Ingredients: ¼ pound fine, fresh oatmeal; 6 ounces white sugar; ½ lemon, cut into small pieces; 1 gallon boiling 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

¼ pound fine, fresh oatmeal
6 ounces white sugar
½ lemon, cut into small pieces
1 gallon boiling water

Directions

Mix oatmeal, sugar, and lemon pieces with a little warm water.
Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over the mixture.
Stir thoroughly and let it cool before serving.

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: Fine oatmeal gives the drink its body and mild grain flavor as it steeps.
White sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon: Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to the drink.

“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.