Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicious Cakes Ok Oatmeal Cookies

A sweet cookie made with oats, raisins, nuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Delicious Cakes Ok Oatmeal 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.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sour milk and dissolved baking soda.

  5. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, mixing until combined.

  6. Fold in the chopped nuts, raisins, and baking powder.

  7. Gradually add the flour and ground oatmeal, mixing until just combined.

Bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into muffin tins or drop onto a baking sheet for cookies.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Shortening
Creams with sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming adds lightness.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cookies rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cookies bake.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour and oatmeal. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cookies stay tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, cinnamon, 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.

More oatmeal cookies recipes

Date 3 See all 164 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes