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Dessert

Oatmeal Gems

A baked oatmeal cake made with oatmeal mush, eggs, breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Oatmeal Gems

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Gems

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the eggs thoroughly, then add salt and pepper.

Make and bake

  1. Stir the egg mixture and bread crumbs into the oatmeal mush.

  2. Pour the mixture into well-buttered gem pans.

  3. Bake 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.

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.

  1. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the gems set firm when baked.
Oatmeal mush
Forms the main body of the gems, giving them their soft, hearty texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Pouring into well-buttered gem pans. Thorough greasing lets the baked gems release cleanly from the pans. Without it, the delicate egg-set mixture can stick and break apart when turned out.

“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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