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Dessert

New England Fruit Cookies

Cookies made with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, eggs, baking soda, flour, currants, raisins, walnuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

New England Fruit Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add the brown sugar and mix well.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and the baking soda dissolved in boiling water.

  4. Sift together 2 cups of flour, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and reserve ¼ cup for dusting the fruit and nuts.

  5. Flour the currants, raisins, and walnuts with the reserved flour, then add them to the mixture.

  6. Mix in the remaining flour until all ingredients are thoroughly blended.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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 and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cookies set.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel-like flavor to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cookies rise and spread.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Flouring the currants, raisins, and walnuts. Coating the fruit and nuts in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom while baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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