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Dessert

Chocolate Fruit Cookies

Chocolate Fruit Cookies are sweet baked cookies containing walnuts, raisins, and chocolate.

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

Chocolate Fruit Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Melt the chocolate in a saucepan.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons boiling water. Cook for one minute, then cool slightly and add to the butter mixture.

  4. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  5. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  6. Dredge the raisins and nuts with 4 tablespoons of the flour.

  7. Add both the flour and the fruit to the mixture. Add more flour if necessary.

  8. Chill the dough.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Creamed with sugar to form the rich, tender base of the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and stay light.
Chocolate
Adds rich chocolate flavour and colour to the dough.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Add the flour and fruit. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and the cookies dry and dense, so add more only if the dough is truly too soft to drop. Dredging the raisins and nuts in flour helps keep them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, sugar, chocolate, raisin, flour, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, sugar, chocolate, raisin, flour, egg. 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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