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Dessert

Boston Cookies

Boston Cookies are buttery, sweet cookies with walnuts, raisins, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Boston 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 ↓

Boston Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat in the eggs until fully combined.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and cinnamon.

  6. Stir half of the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

  7. Fold in the walnuts, raisins, and currants.

  8. Add the remaining flour and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough one inch apart on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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.

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as the cookies set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the moisture and heat to help the cookies rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft dough.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.. Baking soda needs moisture to activate. Dissolving it fully in the hot water spreads it evenly through the dough, so the cookies rise and brown uniformly instead of in patches.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, walnut, 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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