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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar, lard, butter, baking soda, salt, egg, milk, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar, lard and butter, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Cut in the fat until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add the beaten egg, milk, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Scoop onto a baking sheet and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Provides bulk and chewy texture as the main structure of the cookie.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Lard and butter
Fat that coats the flour and oats, giving tenderness and richness to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sugar and raises the dough, helping it spread and lighten.
Egg
Binds the dough together and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and oats into a workable batter.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to form a stiff batter. Too little flour leaves the dough slack, so the cookies spread thin and bake flat. Adding flour gradually until the batter is stiff controls spread and gives a thicker, chewier cookie.

“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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