Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓
Oat Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Mix the butter with the oatmeal.
Add sufficient milk to make a stiff dough.
Dust a board with flour.
Shape and bake
Roll the dough out quickly until it is quite thin.
Cut into oblong pieces.
Bake on a griddle or frying pan.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse oatmeal
- Forms the main body of the oatcake, giving it its grainy texture and bulk.
- Butter
- Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich in flavor.
- Milk
- Moistens the oatmeal so it binds into a stiff, rollable dough.
The step that matters
Roll the dough out quickly until it is quite thin.. Oatmeal dough has little gluten and dries out as it sits, so rolling it promptly keeps it pliable and prevents cracking. Rolling it thin lets the oatcakes cook through and crisp evenly on the griddle.
“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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