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Baking

Wrop Nut and Raisin Cookies

Drop cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon and flour, baked on sheets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Wrop Nut and Raisin Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

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

  5. Stir in the chopped raisins, broken walnuts, cinnamon, and flour until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough 2 inches apart on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake until lightly 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 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 add tenderness and richness to the cookies.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture as the cookies set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in warm water. Baking soda must be fully dissolved before mixing so it spreads evenly through the dough. Clumps can leave bitter, soapy spots and uneven rising.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, raisin, 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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