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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, flour, raisins, and rolled oats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

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 ↓

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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together butter and sugar.

  2. Add eggs and sour milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in baking soda, flour, raisins, and oats until combined.

Bake and cut

  1. Spread the mixture about ¾ inch thick in a large pan.

  2. Bake until golden, then cut into squares.

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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the cookies stay tender.
Sugar
Sweetens and helps create a crisp, golden browned surface when baked.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the bars rise.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the bars together.
Dry rolled oats
Add chewy texture and a toasty, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture to an even thickness. Baking soda reacts with the sour milk to lift the dough, but the layer must be spread evenly so it bakes through at the same rate. A thick, uneven layer can stay raw in the middle while the edges over-brown.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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