Skip to main content
Dessert

Oatmeal Gems

A baked oatmeal cookie made with brown sugar, shortening, eggs, milk, rolled oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, raisins, cinnamon, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Oatmeal Gems

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 ↓

Oatmeal Gems

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar and shortening until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, and stir until smooth.

  3. In another bowl, combine the rolled oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, raisins, cinnamon, and nuts.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Spoon the batter into gem pans or drop onto a large baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown, about 20-25 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.

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 gems brown and stay soft.
Shortening
Provides fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the creamed sugar.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the gems set in the oven.
Rolled oats
Give chewy body and a hearty texture to the gems.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the oats and raisins together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk or buttermilk to help the gems rise and brown.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps the gems tender, because overworking the flour develops gluten and makes the texture tough.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, oats, flour, raisin, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Flaxseedfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, oats, flour, raisin, 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes