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Dessert

Brown Sugar Drop Cookies

A sweet cookie made with brown sugar, butter, raisins, and spices, dropped onto a sheet and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Brown Sugar Drop 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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour, cloves, cinnamon, and raisins.

  5. Add more flour if the dough is not stiff enough to drop from a spoon.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel flavour, and helps the cookies brown.
Butter
Provides fat that creams with sugar to trap air and gives a rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sugars and heat to help the cookies rise and brown.

The step that matters

Add more flour only if needed. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little makes the dough spread. Adjust only until the dough is stiff enough to hold its shape when dropped from a spoon.

Swap the clove

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

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

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