Skip to main content
Dessert

Swedish Oatmeal Cookies

Cookies made with oatmeal, raisins, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Swedish Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, butter, and milk.

  3. Stir in the chopped raisins and oatmeal.

  4. Add the baking powder, baking soda, and vanilla.

  5. Gradually add flour until the mixture thickens.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into cookie shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Oatmeal
Provides the main body and chewy texture of the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the cookies rise and lighten.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the dough structure for shaping.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture thickens. Adding too much flour at once or too much overall makes the dough stiff and dry, producing hard cookies. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is workable and still soft.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, flour):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes