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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A sweet cookie made with oatmeal, sugar, shortening, eggs, nuts, raisins, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

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 the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and shortening.

  3. Add the eggs, cinnamon, and salt; mix well.

  4. Stir in the oatmeal, nuts, baking soda, raisins, and flour until 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. Raisin + flourtop 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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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

Shortening
Creams with the sugar to add fat and tenderness to the cookies.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough so the cookies rise and spread slightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy texture and body to the dough.

The step that matters

Baking time. Cookies keep baking on the hot sheet after leaving the oven, so pulling them as soon as the edges turn golden helps prevent dry, hard results. Overbaking drives off moisture and makes them brittle.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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