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
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the dough
In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, molasses, and coffee.
Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, raisins, nuts, and cinnamon. Stir until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking tins.
Bake
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden.
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.
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Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,390 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,341 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Coffee + nutstop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together105 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together490 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidity in molasses and coffee to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
- Baking powder
- Adds additional leavening so the cookies puff and lighten as they bake.
- Molasses
- Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and color to the dough.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
The step that matters
Stir until well combined. Evenly mixing the leaveners and spices through the dough ensures the cookies rise uniformly. Overmixing after the flour is added can develop gluten and make the cookies tough.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, raisin, cinnamon):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Hazelnutfits about as well
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, raisin, cinnamon. 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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