Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Hermits

A spiced raisin and currant cookie with nutmeats, baked at 375°F.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,075 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Christmas Hermits

Oven375°F
Time20 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream butter and sugar.

  2. Add milk and eggs.

  3. Sift powder with 3 cups flour, add to creamed mix, mix well.

  4. Add raisins, currants, nutmeats and orange rind, then mix well.

  5. Sift spices with remaining flour.

  6. Add to creamed mix and blend well.

Bake and store

  1. Drop by rounded teaspoonsful 1 to 1-½ inches apart onto greased cookie sheet.

  2. Bake at 375°F for 20 minutes or until light brown.

  3. Cool on wire rack.

  4. Store in airtight container.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a molasses-like depth to the cookie dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cookies.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, raisin, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes