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Dessert

Oatmeal Crispies

A baked oatmeal cookie made with shortening, sugars, flour, oatmeal, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Oatmeal Crispies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the shortening, brown sugar, and granulated sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and vanilla extract, and beat well.

  3. Mix in the flour sifted with salt and baking soda.

  4. Stir in the oatmeal and chopped walnuts until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into long rolls and chill thoroughly.

  2. Slice the rolls into ¼ inch thick pieces.

  3. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the crisps tender and helps them spread when baked.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crisps brown and stay chewy.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crisps spread and turn crisp as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the crisps set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after baking.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough slightly and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Chill the rolls thoroughly. Chilling firms the fat so the dough holds its shape when sliced. Warm dough spreads too much in the oven, giving thin, misshapen crisps.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, vanilla, 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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