Skip to main content
Dessert

Queren's Fruit Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, pecans, currants, figs, flour, eggs, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Queren's Fruit Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses and eggs, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder and spices with the flour before sifting.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, then fold in the fruit.

Bake

  1. Butter baking pans and drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto them.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pecans + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, giving the cookies tenderness and flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cookies rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cookies.

Swap the fig

The recipe marks fig as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, molasses, raisin, pecans, currant, flour):

  1. Figthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Datesfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, raisin, pecans, currant, flour. 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

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes