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Dessert

Rolled Oats Cookies

Cookies made with rolled oats, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, spices, nuts, raisins, flour, and buttermilk baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rolled Oats Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix rolled oats, butter, and lard in a bowl and let stand for one hour.

  2. Add eggs, granulated sugar, salt, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, nuts, raisins, flour, and buttermilk to the mixture.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) 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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rolled oats
Provide the bulk and chewy texture of the cookie.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to flavor and a tender bite.
Lard
Adds fat that helps keep the cookies tender and short.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to lift the cookies and aid browning.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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