Name: Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup brown sugar; ½ cup butter; 1 egg; ½ cup sweet milk; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ½ cup all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons melted chocolate; ¼ cup seeded raisins; ¼ cup chopped nuts

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

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

Melt the butter and mix it with brown sugar.
Add the egg and sweet milk, then stir in the baking soda.
Gradually add the flour, melted chocolate, raisins, and nuts.

Shape and bake

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.
Invert a dripping pan, butter the bottom, and place the cookies on it.
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.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor.
Egg: Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.
All-purpose flour: Provides the main structure that sets as the cookies bake.
Melted chocolate: Adds chocolate flavor and richness to the dough.

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Nutsthe original

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