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Dessert

Boston Cookies

Boston Cookies are sweet biscuits made with butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking soda, baking powder, hot water, milk, peanuts, cinnamon, nuts, lemon juice, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Boston Cookies

Why it works: Peanut and nuts share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Boston 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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugars.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Stir in the hot water, milk, peanuts, cinnamon, chopped nuts, lemon juice, and raisins.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 10-12 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.

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. Peanut + nutstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies tender and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Beaten egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the dough to help the cookies rise and spread.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cookies lift.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.. Adding flour in portions and stirring gently keeps the dough smooth and prevents overworking, which would make the cookies tough.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Flaxseedfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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