Why it works: Oats and walnut work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 554 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Brown Sugar 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.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream the butter and brown sugar together.
Add a beaten egg, rolled oats, chopped walnuts, flour, and baking powder to the mixture.
Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into desired shapes.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Oats + walnuttop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together554 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,939 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, oats, flour):
- Almondfits better
- Flaxseedfits better
- Mixed nutsfits better
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, oats, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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