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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oatmeal 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. 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the rolled oats, flour, chopped raisins, cinnamon, allspice, and baking soda.

  4. Add the milk and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto greased baking pans.

  2. 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.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Oats + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Butter
Provides fat that gives the cookies richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and body to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and spread.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, oats, flour, raisin, cinnamon. 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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