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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with oatmeal, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and raisins or currants.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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 the dough

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

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

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

  6. Fold in the chopped raisins or currants, oatmeal, and flour.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking pan.

  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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter and lard
Fat that creams with the sugar to give the cookies richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and spread, and aids browning.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy texture and a toasty, nutty flavor to the cookies.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the dough. Clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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