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Dessert

Fruit Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, flour, raisins, currants, pecans, spices, baking soda, baking powder, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Fruit Cookies

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Fruit Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make and bake the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the flour, raisins, currants, nuts, baking soda dissolved in hot water, baking powder, sweet milk, beaten eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, then mix until well combined.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking pan.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the cookie.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for sweetness and browning, and helps the cookies spread and crisp.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it rise and promote browning.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking soda and baking powder are both leaveners, and the cookies need enough time in the oven for the structure to set. Pulling them too early leaves a soft, doughy center, while overbaking dries them out.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, raisin, pecans, milk, 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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