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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies No. 1

A buttery oatmeal cookie with raisins, oats, and cinnamon baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Oatmeal Cookies No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and lard.

  2. Add the granulated sugar and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon three times.

  4. Add the sifted mixture to the butter mixture.

  5. Stir in the rolled oats and seeded raisins until thoroughly mixed.

  6. Beat the eggs lightly, then add the evaporated milk and water.

  7. Combine the egg mixture with the cookie dough.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + oatstop 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cookies stay tender and spread.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and crumbly.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and brown.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Sifting and combining the dry ingredients evenly. Sifting the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon three times distributes the leavener evenly so the cookies rise uniformly. Uneven mixing can leave pockets of baking soda that cause bitter spots or uneven rising.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, oats, egg, evaporated milk. 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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