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Dessert

Oatmeal Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from oatmeal, water, salt, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oatmeal

  1. Pour 1 pint of cold water over 2 cups of fine oatmeal and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Add 1 quart of boiling water and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook in a double boiler for 1 hour.

  2. Sift the mixture through a wire sieve, pressing hard with a wooden spoon.

Cool and serve

  1. Set the jelly aside to cool.

  2. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fine oatmeal
Provides the starch that thickens the liquid into a jelly as it cooks.
Cold water
Soaks the oatmeal so it softens and hydrates before the hot water and cooking.
Boiling water
Gelatinises the oat starch quickly, giving the mixture its thick, smooth body.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler for 1 hour. Gentle, indirect heat lets the oat starch swell and set slowly without scorching on the bottom of the pan, which keeps the jelly smooth.

“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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