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Breakfast

Oatmeal Breakfast Cakes

A batter of oatmeal, flour, milk, egg, and baking powder cooked on a griddle to make quick breakfast cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mash the oatmeal with a fork.

  2. Add the salt and sugar to the oatmeal and mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat the egg and add the milk to it.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the oatmeal mixture.

  5. Add the milk mixture and beat well.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a well-greased griddle.

  2. Cook until one side is brown, then turn and brown the other side.

  3. Serve immediately with syrup or sugar.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them a hearty, slightly chewy texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as the cakes set.
Flour
Provides structure so the cakes hold their shape on the griddle.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Cook until one side is brown, then turn and brown the other side. The griddle must be hot enough to brown the surface before the inside sets. Turning too early tears the cakes, and cooking too slowly makes them pale and gummy in the middle.

“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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