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Dessert

Fruit Drop Cookies

Cookies made with powdered sugar, egg whites, citron, lemon rind, spices, baking soda, flour, mixed fruit, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Drop 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine powdered sugar and beaten egg whites.

  2. Add citron, lemon rind, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and dissolved baking soda.

  3. Mix in flour and then fold in the mixed fruit and coffee.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake until lightly 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites beaten to foam add lift and structure as the cookies set.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cookies their body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic components to help the cookies rise and spread slightly.
Mixed fruit
Adds chewy texture, sweetness, and bulk to the dough.

The step that matters

Folding in the mixed fruit and coffee. Overmixing after the flour is added develops gluten and makes the cookies tough. Fold gently until just combined so the dough stays tender and the fruit stays evenly distributed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour, fig):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour, fig. 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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