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Dessert

Ohooolate Cookies

A chocolate and almond cookie made with butter, lard, sugar, eggs, vanilla, spices, almonds, flour, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ohooolate 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and lard with the sugar until well combined.

  3. Beat the yolks and whites of 3 eggs together, then add to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Stir in the scraped chocolate, vanilla, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and pounded almonds.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  6. Finally, mix in the milk until smooth.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet or spread in a thin layer in a pan.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes or until set.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 gives the cookies tenderness and a rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cookies as the proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the cookies rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Baker's chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Baking beyond the point of setting dries the cookies and makes them hard, while underbaking leaves the centre gummy because the egg and flour have not firmed up. Watching for the batter to look set keeps them soft yet structured.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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