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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, oats, raisins, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Oatmeal Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very 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 and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking soda, flour, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, and oats until combined.

  4. Shape the mixture into cookies without rolling.

Bake

  1. 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Cinnamon + oatstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps carry flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture and browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to lift the cookies and promote browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Oats
Add chewy body and a hearty texture to the cookies.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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