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Dessert

Oat Meal Cookies

A sweet cookie made with brown sugar, molasses, eggs, shortening, rolled oats, raisins, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oat Meal 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grind the raisins using a grinding machine.

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix brown sugar, molasses, eggs, shortening, rolled oats, ground raisins, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

Bake

  1. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Oats + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a soft, short texture.
Rolled oats
Provide body and a chewy, hearty texture to the cookie.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color with flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cookies rise and spread.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to make a stiff dough. Too little flour leaves the dough soft and spreading, so the cut shapes lose definition in the oven. Too much makes the cookies dry and tough. The dough should hold its shape when rolled and cut.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, egg, oats, raisin, cinnamon, 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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