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Dessert

Children's Cookies

A simple cookie made with eggs, brown sugar, butter, lard, flour, baking powder, and topped with raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Children's Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, lard, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place a raisin on each cookie before baking.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and short in texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning and a chewy texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cookies as its proteins and starches set when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cookies rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until smooth keeps the dough from overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cookies tough.

“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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