Name: Boston Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 1½ cups brown sugar; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 2½ cups flour; a pinch of salt; nutmeg to taste; 1½ cups raisins, chopped; cloves, finely chopped to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boston 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.
Add the baking soda, flour, salt, nutmeg, raisins, and cloves.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender texture.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda: Reacts to lift the dough and help the cookies spread and rise.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Raisins: Add chewiness and natural sweetness throughout the cookies.

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, nutmeg, 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.