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Drink

Oatmeal Water

A simple oatmeal beverage made by simmering oats in water, optionally flavored with lemon, sugar, or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oats and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,119 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Oatmeal Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of water with 3 oz. of coarse oatmeal.

  2. Simmer gently on the stove for about 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or gravy strainer, adding a little more hot water to extract all the goodness.

  4. If the mixture is too thick, thin it down with additional water or hot milk, using half oatmeal water and half milk 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.

  1. Oats + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Oats + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,548 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Coarse oatmeal
Simmered slowly in water, it releases starch and soluble fibre that thicken and give the liquid body.
Water
Extracts the oatmeal's starches and flavour during the long simmer, forming the drink itself.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer extracts starch and flavour from the oats without a hard boil, which can break up the grains and make the liquid cloudy or pasty. Keeping the heat low also reduces the risk of scorching on the base of the pot.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oats, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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