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Dessert

Chocolate Cookies

A simple chocolate cookie made with brown sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, chocolate, baking powder, and optional raisins or nuts.

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

Chocolate 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat together the brown sugar and melted butter.

  3. Add the whole egg and egg yolk, along with the melted chocolate, and beat again.

  4. Mix in the sweet milk and flour until combined.

  5. If desired, fold in raisins and nuts.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter far apart on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake until set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they set.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the cookie.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour.

The step that matters

Spacing the spoonfuls of batter. Cookie batter spreads as it bakes. Dropping spoonfuls far apart on the sheet leaves room for spreading so the cookies do not merge into one mass.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, chocolate, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, chocolate, nuts. 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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