Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Oatmeal Biscuits or Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the dough
In a bowl, mix the flour, oatmeal, sugar, and baking soda, breaking up any lumps.
Melt the lard and beat the egg with a little cold water.
Pour the hot lard into the dry ingredients and mix well, then add the beaten egg and just enough cold water to moisten the mixture.
Knead the dough lightly and roll it out thinly.
Cut and bake
Cut into small rounds or quarters of larger ones.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes or until the cakes are a pale brown color.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Provides the main structure of the biscuits as the dough sets in the oven.
- Oatmeal
- Adds a slightly chewy texture and nutty flavor to the biscuits.
- Lard
- Adds fat for tenderness and flakiness in the finished biscuits.
- Egg
- Binds the dough and helps give the biscuits structure and color.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the dough to help it rise and encourages browning.
The step that matters
Adding the cold water. Only enough cold water should be added to moisten the dough. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, and can toughen the biscuits.
“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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