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Dessert

Drop Cookies

Drop Cookies are sweet biscuits made with flour, sugar, butter, lard, eggs, vanilla, sour cream, nutmeg, raisins, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Drop Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the baking soda, baking powder, flour, sugar, butter, lard, eggs, vanilla, sour cream, nutmeg, and raisins or currants using your fingers.

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

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar when cool.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter and lard
Provide fat that adds tenderness and helps the cookies spread and brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, adding lift to the drop cookies.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning at the cookies' surface.
Sour cream or milk
Adds moisture and tenderness; its acidity works with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Dropping the spoonfuls onto the pan. Spacing and portion size control how the cookies spread and bake. Mounds that are too large or too close together can merge or bake unevenly, so each spoonful should be set apart on the greased pan.

“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.

More drop cookies recipes

Ginger 12Fruit 9Coconut 7Cinnamon 5Oatmeal 5Anise 3 See all 14 →

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