Name: Boston Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup brown sugar; ¾ cup butter; 2 eggs; 2 cups flour; ½ teaspoon ground cloves; ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon; 10 cents worth chopped walnuts; 1 cup raisins; 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in a little hot water

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boston 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Stir in the flour, cloves, cinnamon, walnuts, raisins, and baking soda mixture.

Bake

Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking pan.
Bake 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.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,147 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Butter: Provides fat for richness and a tender texture.
Eggs: Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cookies together.
Baking soda: Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and spread.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutthe original

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