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Dessert

Fruit Drop Cookies

Fruit Drop Cookies are small sweet biscuits made with shortening, sugar, egg, spices, flour, salt, walnuts, currants, raisins, and optional citron.

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

Fruit Drop Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

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

  2. Beat in the egg, then add the spice, baking powder, flour, and salt.

  3. Fold in the walnuts, currants, raisins, and citron if using.

Bake

  1. Drop by teaspoon onto oiled baking sheets.

  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.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Snowdrift or shortening
Provides fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour through the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and moisture as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cookies rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavour to the cookies.

The step that matters

Drop by teaspoon onto oiled baking sheets. Spacing and portion size control spread and shape. Dough dropped too large or packed too closely can bake into merged, uneven cookies, so portions should be small and separated.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, 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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