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Quaker Oats Porridge

A simple porridge made with Quaker oats, water, milk, salt or sugar, simmered for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Quaker Oats Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oats

  1. In a pot, bring water to a boil.

  2. Stir in the oats and salt or sugar.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with milk.

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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oats
Their starch swells and thickens the water into a porridge with a soft, hearty texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness, softening the porridge's flavour when stirred in at serving.

The step that matters

Stir occasionally while simmering. Oats are heavy and settle on the bottom of the pot, where they can scorch. Stirring keeps them suspended and heats the mixture evenly, so the porridge thickens smoothly without burnt flavour.

“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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