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Dessert

Filled Cookies

A sweet cookie dough with a raisin filling baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Filled 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and shortening.

  3. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla; mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook the raisins, sugar, water, and flour in a saucepan until thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the cookie dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place a spoonful of filling on half of the cookies, then top with another cookie.

  3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps create a soft crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough and filling together during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that leavens the cookies.
Raisins
Cooked into the filling, they add sweetness, body and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. The flour thickens the raisin mixture as it heats, and the filling must be thick enough to stay inside the cookies rather than leaking out during baking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, flour, cream, vanilla):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, flour, cream, vanilla. 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 filled cookies recipes

Raisin 4 See all 6 →

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