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Dessert

Scotch Cookies

A sweet oatmeal cookie made with shortening, sugar, eggs, sour milk, baking powder, cinnamon, flour, oatmeal, currants, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Scotch 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Stir in the sour milk, baking powder, and cinnamon.

  4. Mix in the oatmeal, flour, salt, currants, and raisins.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 12-15 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.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Shortening
Adds fat that gives the cookies a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Creams with the fat for sweetness and helps the cookies brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking powder to lift the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cookies rise and stay light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the oats and fruit together.

The step that matters

Bake until golden, not longer. Oat and sugar-rich cookies go from golden to dry and hard quickly. Pulling them once the edges turn golden keeps the centres soft and chewy as they cool.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, cinnamon, flour, 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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