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Dessert

Raisin Cookies

A baked cookie made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raisin 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the sugar and butter together in a bowl until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs two at a time, creaming them in well.

  3. Stir in the vanilla extract.

  4. Sift together the baking powder and flour.

  5. Toss the raisins in the flour to coat them.

  6. Gently mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture until just combined.

Shape and bake

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

  2. If desired, wash the tops with milk and place raisins on top.

  3. Bake 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.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lightness and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and richness to the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and turn lighter.

The step that matters

Gently mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture until just combined.. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which makes the cookies tough and dense rather than tender.

“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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