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Dessert

Oatmeal Pudding

A baked oatmeal pudding made with milk, eggs, flour, and oatmeal, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the oatmeal and flour smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk, then add the blended oatmeal and flour.

  3. Stir and boil gently for five minutes.

  4. Add salt to taste, and when cool, mix in the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for twenty minutes.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar or golden syrup.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Flour
Adds further thickening so the mixture sets smoothly rather than staying watery.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the oatmeal and flour swell in and thicken.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened mixture. Starches in the oatmeal and flour need to be fully heated in boiling liquid to swell and thicken. Boiling gently for the full five minutes avoids a raw, pasty texture and keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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