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Oatmeal Bread

A bread made from oats, flour, yeast, butter, molasses, and salt, baked after overnight fermentation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Bread

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oats and yeast

  1. Pour the boiling water over the rolled oats and let it stand for one hour.

  2. Soak the yeast in ½ cup warm water.

Mix and rest overnight

  1. Add the other ingredients to make a batter as stiff as can be stirred with a spoon.

  2. Set this mixture overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, divide the mixture into 2 small pans, let it rise again, and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Oats + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Oats + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + molassestop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rolled oats
Soak up the boiling water and add body and a tender, moist crumb.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it rises.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise during the long rest and second rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper colour to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer texture.

The step that matters

Making the batter stiff enough to stir with a spoon. Flour sets the structure, so a batter that is too loose will spread and collapse, while too much flour makes the loaf dense and dry.

“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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