Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cookies

Fruit cookies are sweet baked cookies made with sugar, eggs, milk, butter, flour, cinnamon, currants, raisins, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fruit 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 ↓

Fruit Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Gradually add a little flour, then the milk, followed by more flour and the cinnamon.

  5. Sift the salt with the remaining flour.

  6. Reserve ¼ cup of flour for dredging the currants and raisins.

  7. Chop the currants and raisins, dredge them in the reserved flour, and add to the batter.

  8. Stir in the baking soda.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto greased parchment paper.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cookies rise and spread.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid in the batter to react and lift the dough; if it is not evenly mixed, some cookies may rise unevenly or taste soapy. Mix it in thoroughly and bake promptly so the leavening works before the dough sets.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More fruit cookies recipes

Chocolate 5Cocoa 4 See all 68 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes