Name: Boston Cookies
Ingredients: 1½ cups sugar; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 3 eggs; 1 cup chopped nuts; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ½ cup currants; 1½ tablespoons hot water; ½ cup chopped raisins; 3¼ cups sifted flour

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Boston Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.
Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.
Stir in half of the flour along with the cinnamon.
Add the chopped nuts, currants, raisins, and the remaining flour.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spacing them about an inch apart.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Datesfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, egg, nuts, raisin, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.