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Dessert

Hermit Cookies

A sweet cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, raisins, walnuts, figs, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Hermit 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, mix sugar and spices.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of flour, then the baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  4. Add another cup of flour before mixing in the chopped fruit, walnuts, and figs.

  5. Gradually add the last cup of flour.

Bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and bake 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. 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cookies tenderness and a soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the other ingredients to help the cookies rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin. Rolling the dough thin controls how far the cookies spread and how evenly they bake. Thick dough stays soft in the centre while the edges over-brown.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, meat. 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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