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Baking

English Cookies

A sweet cookie with raisins, pecans, cinnamon, and cloves, made with grape juice and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

English Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs or yolks very light.

  2. In a bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

  3. Add sugar, grape juice, butter, cinnamon, and cloves to the flour mixture.

  4. Mix in the chopped raisins and pecans until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the batter into gem rings and bake.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookie together.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the cookies rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Grapethe original

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