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Cookies, Doughnuts, Small Cakes, Etc.

A simple oatmeal raisin cookie recipe with sugar, shortening, eggs, milk, flour, raisins, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cookies, Doughnuts, Small Cakes, Etc.

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar and shortening until creamy.

  3. Add eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in oatmeal, dissolved baking soda, salt, flour, raisins, and cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a greased pan.

  2. Bake until light brown.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Shortening
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy texture and a hearty body to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and spread and brown.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Cookies keep setting as they cool, so pulling them when the edges are just light brown keeps them soft in the centre. Baking longer dries them out and makes them hard.

“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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