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Dessert

Boston Cookies

A buttery cookie with walnuts, currants, raisins, and cinnamon baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Boston Cookies

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 ↓

Boston Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.

  5. Sift together the flour, salt, and cinnamon, then add to the mixture.

  6. Fold in the chopped walnuts, currants, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown while creaming with the butter.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as they are beaten in.
Baking soda
Reacts with the moisture to help the cookies rise and spread and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft dough.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it is evenly distributed through the dough; undissolved pockets can cause uneven rising and bitter spots.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, walnut, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, walnut, raisin. 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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