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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A sweet cookie made with lard, sugar, milk, eggs, oats, flour, raisins, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Oatmeal 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 ↓

Oatmeal 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 lard and sugar.

  2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the rolled oats, flour, raisins, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and baking powder until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet and flatten with a can.

  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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Oats + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lard
Creams with sugar to give the cookies tenderness and a rich, short texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp at the edges while baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure so the cookies hold together.
Rolled oats
Add chewy bulk and a nutty flavour, absorbing moisture in the dough.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cookies bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.

The step that matters

Flattening the dough spoonfuls. The dough is stiff and spreads only a little in the oven, so flattening the spoonfuls evenly ensures they bake through and brown at the same rate.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, oats, flour, raisin, nutmeg. 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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