Name: Oat Meal, Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 3½ cups oat meal; 1½ cups flour; 1 cup boiling water; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup lard

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Oat Meal, Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

In a large bowl, combine sugar, oat meal, flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the boiling water and mix well.
Add the lard and blend until smooth.

Shape and bake

Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet and bake 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.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Oat meal: Provides bulk and a chewy texture in the finished cookie.
Flour: Gives the dough structure so the cookies hold their shape while baking.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Baking soda: Reacts with the dough to help it rise and spread slightly.
Lard: Adds fat, tenderness and richness to the dough.