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Dessert

Boston Cookies

A sweet cookie with butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, hot water, flour, salt, cinnamon, nuts, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Boston 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 ↓

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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour, salt, and cinnamon until combined.

  5. Fold in the chopped nuts and raisins.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 10-12 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lightness and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to help the cookies rise and spread and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in hot water. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it disperses evenly through the dough; clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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