Skip to main content
Dessert

Oat Meal Drop Cakes

A baked oatmeal drop cake with raisins, nuts, and citrus zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oat Meal Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix together oat meal, raisins, and chopped nut meats.

  2. Cream softened butter with sugar in a separate bowl.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in milk and add to the butter mixture.

  4. Incorporate the grated rind and juice of the lemon or orange.

  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and beat well.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oat meal
Provides the bulk and chewy, hearty body of the cookie.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acid to lift the cakes and help them spread.
Flour
Gives structure so the drops hold their shape while baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the baking soda into the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly throughout the batter. Lumps can leave bitter pockets and uneven rising.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, meat, butter, sugar, milk, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, meat, butter, sugar, milk, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes