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Dessert

Spiced Cookies

Cookies made with sugar, shortening, butter, egg, milk, spices, raisins, and a stiff dough baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spiced 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and shortening.

  2. Add the egg and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda mixture, and baking powder.

  4. Fold in the chopped raisins.

  5. Add flour gradually until the dough is stiff enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°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.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.
Shortening
Adds fat that creams with sugar to give the cookies tenderness.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cookies rise and brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cookies lift.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the dough is stiff enough to roll. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves a dough too soft to cut. Adding it in stages lets you judge the texture before overworking the dough.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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