Name: Oatmeal Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups boiling water; 1 cup rolled oats; 4 tablespoons brown sugar or ⅓ cup molasses; 2 tablespoons fat; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 yeast cake; Flour to make a stiff dough, about 4 cups

Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Oatmeal Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

Pour boiling water over rolled oats and let sit.
Add brown sugar or molasses, fat, salt, and yeast cake.
Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough, about 4 cups.
Let the dough rise until sufficiently risen.

Bake

Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).
Bake the bread until thoroughly cooked.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Oats + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,169 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oats + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,548 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rolled oats: Soak in boiling water to soften and add a hearty texture and moisture to the crumb.
Yeast cake: Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Flour: Forms the gluten structure that holds the stiff dough and the risen loaf together.
Brown sugar or molasses: Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, color and a moist, tender crumb.

“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.