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Oatmeal Porridge

A breakfast dish of oatmeal porridge served with fried haddock, eggs, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oatmeal Porridge

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Bring ½ pint of water and a pinch of salt to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Slowly add 2 ounces of coarse oatmeal while stirring.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.

  4. Optionally, substitute milk for water for a richer porridge.

  5. Serve on a hot plate.

Prepare the haddock

  1. Remove the flesh from the dried haddock, ensuring no bones remain.

  2. Heat 2 ounces of butter in a frying pan and warm the haddock fillets for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper and serve hot.

Make the eggs on toast

  1. Toast slices of bread, cut off the crust, and butter them well.

  2. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a small saucepan.

  3. Beat 6 eggs with pepper, salt, minced onion, and 2 tablespoons of milk.

  4. Stir the egg mixture until it thickens.

  5. Pour the thickened mixture over buttered toast spread with anchovy or bloater paste.

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. Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coarse oatmeal
Swells in boiling water to thicken the porridge into a soft, creamy texture.
Eggs
Set as they are stirred with heat, thickening the mixture into a soft, custard-like topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the haddock and toast brown lightly.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the eggs and, optionally, to the porridge.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture until it thickens. Eggs set when heated, and gentle, constant stirring keeps the proteins from clumping or scrambling into curds. Taking it off the heat while still slightly soft lets residual heat finish the set without turning rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, butter, haddock, pepper, egg, anchovy):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, haddock, pepper, egg, anchovy. 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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