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Dessert

Drop Nut Cookies

Drop nut cookies are sweet biscuits made with butter, sugar, raisins, currants, nuts, sour milk, eggs, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Drop Nut 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 large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, chopped nuts, and sour milk, mixing well.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creaming with butter aerates the dough and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as they are beaten in.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cookies rise and soften.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, helping the cookies rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, which makes cookies tough. Stir only until no dry flour streaks remain.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, raisin, currant, milk, egg, clove. 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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