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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with oats, nuts, raisins, flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking soda, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

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 ↓

Oatmeal Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the oats, nuts, flour, raisins, baking soda, cinnamon, and milk until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets.

  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.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Oats + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and a toasty, nutty flavour to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and spread and brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and stay soft when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Baking time. Baking only until golden keeps cookies soft and chewy in the middle. Overbaking dries them out and makes them hard once they cool, since they keep firming as they rest.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Flaxseedfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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