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Dessert

Oatmeal and Treacle Cake

A cake made with oatmeal, flour, lard, treacle, milk, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 and Treacle Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Add the melted lard, treacle, and milk to the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir until you have a stiff batter.

  4. Pour the batter into a flat baking tin.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly to prevent burning.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and milk 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its gluten sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Fine oatmeal
Adds a hearty, slightly grainy texture and absorbs liquid into the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Treacle
Provides sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and contributes a rich flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and sets the batter's moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Bake slowly. Treacle and sugar scorch easily at high heat, so a low oven lets the cake cook through and brown evenly without burning on the outside.

“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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