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Oatmeal Hasty Pudding

A quick oatmeal pudding made by mixing flour, oatmeal, and milk, then boiling and serving with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Oatmeal Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix flour, oatmeal, and salt with cold milk until a thin paste forms.

  2. Gradually stir this mixture into boiling milk.

  3. Beat the mixture with a fork until smooth and lump-free.

  4. Boil quickly for 4-5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour onto small plates and serve immediately.

  2. Serve cream and sugar or treacle in a tureen.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Oatmeal
Adds a grainy, nutty texture and a mild oat flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a soft, creamy pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring the paste into boiling milk and beating it smooth. Starch granules clump when they hit hot liquid all at once and form lumps before they can disperse. Adding the thin paste slowly while stirring and beating spreads the starch evenly, so it thickens into a smooth 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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