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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with oatmeal, sugar, butter, lard, eggs, milk, nuts, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

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

  2. Beat in the eggs and milk.

  3. Stir in the oatmeal, cinnamon, vanilla, nuts, raisins, baking powder, and baking soda.

  4. Add enough flour to form a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

  1. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter and lard
Provide fat that creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies tenderness.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the cookies their structure.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy body and a toasted, nutty flavour to the cookies.
Baking powder and baking soda
Leaven the dough so the cookies rise and spread during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to form a stiff batter. The record gives no exact flour amount, so the dough can easily end up too wet or too dry. Flour absorbs liquid and builds structure, so adding it gradually until the batter holds its shape keeps the cookies from spreading too thin.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

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