Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Oatmeal Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pour boiling milk over oatmeal and soak overnight.
Beat the eggs and mix with salt.
Butter a basin that will hold the mixture.
Cook
Cover tightly with a floured cloth and boil for 1.5 hours.
Serve
Serve with cold butter and salt.
When cold, slice and toast, then serve like oat cake with butter.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Oatmeal
- Absorbs the hot milk and swells to give the pudding its body and bulk.
- Milk
- Softens the oats during soaking and supplies the moisture for the pudding.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and set as it heats, holding the pudding together.
The step that matters
Cover tightly and boil steadily. A tight seal stops boiling water entering the basin, so the pudding steams rather than becoming waterlogged. As the mixture heats, the egg proteins set and the starch thickens, giving a firm pudding.
“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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