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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, currants or raisins, flour, and oatmeal.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

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

  2. Beat in the eggs and sour milk.

  3. Mix in the baking soda, salt, cinnamon, currants or raisins, flour, and oatmeal until well combined.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that gives tenderness and helps the cookies spread while baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Releases gas when combined with the acidic sour milk, helping the cookies rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Pulling the cookies at golden brown. Cookies keep cooking from residual heat after leaving the oven, so removing them once golden brown keeps them soft. Baking too long dries them out and makes them hard.

Swap the currant

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

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

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