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Dessert

Oatmeal Pudding

A warm pudding made from oatmeal, milk, sugar, molasses, nutmeg, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Oatmeal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine 1 cup of uncooked oatmeal and 1 quart of milk.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of sugar, ½ cup of molasses, and salt to taste, then add grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  4. Cook over medium heat until thickened, then serve warm with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the oatmeal swells and thickens in.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the molasses.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the top of the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until thickened. Oatmeal starch thickens as it absorbs liquid and heats. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugar and molasses on the bottom of the pot, while heat that is too low may leave the oats raw and the pudding thin.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, molasses, butter, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, molasses, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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