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Baking

Nut Cookies

Nut Cookies are baked cookies containing butter, lard, brown sugar, cinnamon, walnuts, raisins, oats, flour, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Nut Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and lard.

  2. Add the brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the water, walnuts, eggs, raisins, vanilla, oats, baking soda, and flour until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking pan.

  2. 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Vanilla + oatstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cinnamon + oatstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter and lard
Provides fat that makes the cookies rich and tender while creaming with sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel-like flavor to the cookies.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the dough to help the cookies rise and brown.
Oats
Add chewy texture and body to the dough.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cinnamon, egg, raisin, vanilla, oats. 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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