Skip to main content
Dessert

Cookies with Raisins

Cookies with Raisins are sweet baked cookies containing raisins.

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

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 ↓

Cookies with Raisins

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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and lard.

  2. Add the sweet milk and beaten egg, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the sifted flour and baking powder, mixing until combined.

Shape and fill

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into shapes.

  2. Place a teaspoonful of the filling on each cookie and top with another cookie.

Bake and finish the filling

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, mix together ½ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, boiling water, and chopped raisins.

  3. Cook the filling until thickened.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as the cookies bake.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the dough short and tender rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Raisins
Provide chewy sweetness and moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cooking the sugar, flour and boiling water together lets the starch swell and set the filling. A filling that stays thin can run out of the sandwiched cookies and soak into the dough.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, 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, milk, egg, 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.

More raisin cookies recipes

Oatmeal 9Spiced 4 See all 19 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes