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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies with Date Filling

A baked cookie made with lard, flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and dates, filled with a boiled date mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and dates work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Oatmeal Cookies with Date Filling

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.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the lard and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs and vanilla, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface using ⅓ cup of flour.

  7. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

Make the filling and bake

  1. For the filling, boil the dates with sugar and lemon juice until soft.

  2. Spread the date filling on half of the cookies and top with the other half.

  3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Lard
Creams with sugar to add fat and tenderness to the cookie dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and lighten.
Dates
Cook down into a soft, sweet filling that adds moisture and flavor.

The step that matters

Baking the filled cookies. Sandwiched cookies need enough time to set and brown through without the date filling burning or spilling. Watching for golden edges shows when the dough is fully baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, vanilla, dates. 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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