Skip to main content
Dessert

Filled Cookies

Cookies made with a raisin filling, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Filled Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and lard.

  3. Add the beaten egg, sweet milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt. Mix well.

  4. Roll the dough very thin.

  5. Cut the dough into shapes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine chopped raisins, ½ cup sugar, and ½ cup water in a saucepan.

  2. Blend 1 tablespoon of flour with a little lemon juice and water.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Cook the filling until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place 1 teaspoon of filling on each cookie.

  2. Top each cookie with another cookie.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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
Forms the dough's structure, setting the cookie body as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cookie dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and filling and contributes to golden browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift and lighten the cookies.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to baking soda, helping the cookies rise and stay tender.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy body to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. The flour thickens the raisin mixture as it heats. If the filling is too thin, it runs out of the cookies in the oven; cooking it fully lets the starch swell and set the filling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour, cream, vanilla):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour, cream, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes