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Dessert

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with eggs, sugar, butter, water, flour, oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Oatmeal Cookies

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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Mix the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the butter and water, mixing until smooth.

  3. Stir in the flour, oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and chopped raisins.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the cookies brown.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Oatmeal
Adds chewy texture and a hearty body to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and spread.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking time is short and the cookies keep cooking on the hot sheet after leaving the oven. Pulling them when edges turn golden keeps them chewy rather than dry and hard.

“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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