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Oatmeal Cakes

Oatmeal cakes are small, baked oat cakes made from oatmeal, water or skim milk, egg, milk, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cakes

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cakes

  1. Mix oatmeal with enough water or skim milk to form a stiff paste.

  2. Shape the paste into balls the size of small eggs.

  3. Flatten each ball into a round shape about the size of a small cheese plate.

  4. Sprinkle dry oatmeal on each shaped cake.

  5. Stack the cakes, adding dry oatmeal between each layer, until you have eighteen cakes.

  6. Ensure each cake is turned and shaped evenly.

Cook and finish

  1. Preheat a bake-stone until hot.

  2. Place each cake on the bake-stone and press down with a clean cloth until light brown.

  3. Glaze the top with a mixture of egg, milk, and sugar before removing from the bake-stone.

  4. Lay each cake across a rolling pin to dry in a hollow shape.

  5. Once hard and crisp, stack the cakes.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oatmeal
Forms the body of each cake, binding into a stiff paste when mixed with liquid.
Egg
Adds structure and helps the glaze set and brown on the cake surface.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the glaze brown on the cake surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze brown on the cake surface.

The step that matters

Press down with a clean cloth until light brown. Pressing on a hot bake-stone spreads the cake thin and browns the surface. Too little heat or time leaves it pale and soft, while too much can scorch it before it dries and crisps.

“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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