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Dessert

Oat Meal Drop Cookies

A baked cookie made with oats, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, raisins, and hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Oat Meal Drop 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 bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the flour and oats, mixing until combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins and hickory nuts.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a buttered baking pan, spacing them apart.

  2. If the dough spreads too much, add more flour.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + oatstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the cookies.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Quaker oats
Add chewy texture and a hearty body to the dough.
White sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding more flour if the dough spreads. Extra flour stiffens the dough and reduces spreading, since butter melts in the oven and loosens the structure. Adding it changes the texture, so add it only as needed.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, oats, nutmeg, 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.

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