Name: Iced Oatmeal Flakes
Ingredients: 4 heaping tablespoons Quaker Oats or wheat flakes; 3½ cups boiling water; ¼ teaspoon salt; powdered sugar; cream; fruit (optional)

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Iced Oatmeal Flakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oatmeal

Stir the oats or wheat flakes into the boiling water.
Add salt and cook for 20 minutes in a double boiler.
Pour into cups, filling each half full.

Chill and serve

Place cups on ice overnight.
When ready to serve, remove from cups and top with powdered sugar, cream, and fruit if desired.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Oats + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,548 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Oats + creamtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Oats or wheat flakes: Form the body of the porridge as they soften and thicken in the boiling water.
Boiling water: Hydrates the flakes so they swell and cook into a soft mass.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, fatty contrast to the cooled oatmeal.

“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.