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Dessert

Chocolate Cookies

Chocolate cookies made with brown sugar, whole-wheat flour, shortening, raisins, nuts, milk, salt, baking soda, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chocolate 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 ↓

Chocolate Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, stir together the brown sugar, whole-wheat flour, melted shortening, chopped raisins, chopped nuts, milk, salt, baking soda, and melted chocolate until well combined.

  2. Drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking tins.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool before serving.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wheat + nutstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole-wheat flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Melted shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lift the cookies and promote browning.
Melted chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and adds richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking only until the cookies are set keeps them moist and chewy. Overbaking dries them out and makes them hard, since they firm further as they cool.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wheat, flour, raisin, milk, chocolate):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wheat, flour, raisin, milk, chocolate. 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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