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Baking

Rock Cookies

Cookies made with brown sugar, butter, flour, pecans, raisins, dates, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

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

Rock 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the flour, pecans, raisins, dates, cinnamon, baking soda mixture, and salt until well combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto greased baking sheets.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Pecans + datestop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Pecans + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,047 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and adds richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and brown.
Dates
Add moisture and chewiness, and natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating the butter and sugar together traps air in the fat, which helps the cookies rise and gives them an even texture. Butter that is too soft or too cold will not trap air well.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, raisin, dates, egg, cinnamon. 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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