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Fruit and Nut Cookies

Cookies made with brown sugar, nuts, raisins, sour cream, butter, eggs, spices, baking soda, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut 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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix brown sugar, chopped nuts, chopped raisins, sour cream, and softened butter.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add to the mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and baking powder, then mix well.

  6. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiffer than cake.

Bake

  1. Drop small pieces of dough onto a baking pan, ensuring they do not touch.

  2. Bake 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the dough and whipped whites add lift and a lighter texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the dough.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, giving a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to help the cookies rise and brown.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape when dropped and baked.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. The dough must be stiff enough, stiffer than cake batter, so the drops hold their shape instead of spreading. Adding flour gradually lets you stop once that texture is reached.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, cream, butter, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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