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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, lard, cream, baking soda, dates, sugar, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oatmeal Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, lard, cream, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Roll the dough thin and cut it into squares.

Fill and assemble

  1. For the filling, cook dates, sugar, water, and vinegar slowly until thick.

  2. Spread the date filling between two squares of cookie dough.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dough together and sets during baking.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy texture and a toasty, nutty flavour to the cookie dough.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to help the cookies rise and brown.
Dates
Form the thick, sweet filling that sets the flavour of the cookie.

The step that matters

Cooking the date filling until thick. Dates cooked slowly with sugar and water soften and thicken as moisture evaporates. If the filling stays thin, it will soak into the dough and make the cookies soggy, so it needs to be cooked until it holds its shape.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, cream, vinegar. 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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